FEMA's new Blog - more social media thanks to Craig Fugate

As I posted previously, I think social media is hugely important for helping emergency management connect with the general public in more than a trivial way. With Craig Fugate at the helm, FEMA is starting to get serious about using social media both to keep people informed and also as a way for themselves to find out what is going on. The latest is FEMA's new blog at http://blog.fema.gov/. Now if most government entities created a blog, I'd just think they did it because it was the trendy thing to do, but I think this one will actually be quite interesting (and encouragingly there are there posts there already).

Comcast internet outage: Twitter does it again

Another major Comcast outage tonight, this time in the midwest, with Comcast's DNS servers in Chicago apparently going down. After last week's east cost outage, this is most interesting and one might speculate as to what is going on behind the scenes. But the most interesting thing for me at the moment is that the reason I know this is happening is thanks to twitter: my internet goes down, I search Twitter for "Comcast" and not only find out it is more widespread than my home, but also how to fix it (switch your router DNS server address to Google's 8.8.8.8 - see Google's DNS pages for more information on how to set it up).

Note that if you have a wireless router, it's very easy to set up - just log onto your router (usually by going to 192.168.1.1 in your browser - if you don't know your password try admin for the username and password for the password), then go to the basic settings, and somewhere it will say something like "DNS Address: get dynamically from ISP". Unclick this and manually put in the address 8.8.8.8 (Google's server). Restart your router and it should work

Even more interestingly, as of 9.25pm Eastern time, there appear to be no news outlets carrying the story - a search on Google News for "comcast" brings back nothing (although a "realtime" search pulls up the tweets and also shows the increase in traffic referring to Comcast). So Twitter wins again...

Boulder Canyon Wildfire

Here are some resources for getting the latest information on the October 29 2010 Boulder Canyon Fire. As of Oct 29 at 9.30, there were two fires located approximately 1/4 mile west of Boulder Canyon. The fires are about 10 acres in size and moving north. Currently the fire is burning near Elephant Buttress above Dome Rock on city of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. The most common Twitter hashtag appears to be #boulderfire although #domefire and #bouldercanyonfire are also being used.

Real-time information

Emergency information from Boulder EOC on the Boulder Canyon fires including evacuations
Maps of fire perimeter and evacuation areas (new 5pm Friday, PDF)
Tweets for #domefire OR #boulderfire OR #bouldercanyonfire
Tweet Map for Boulder Canyon Wildfire created by EPIC Colorado

Collaborative Google Map with fire locations and information (see also embedded below)
Alternative Google Map including fire area estimation and evacuation area (also embedded below)
Visionlink map including multiple streams (twitter, etc)
Boulderfire live twitter streams
Firestats page with aggregation of information sources
Xcel Energy Outages Map
Live Video from channel 1
9News Live Webcast
9News slideshow
Daily Camera fire page including maps and videos

INCIWEB - this fire is not there yet, but when it is it will have updates and links to other resources

Boulder County Live Scanner Feeds and Incident Updates - listen live to police and fire radio traffic

Local news sites: 9News, CBS4, KDVR, Denver Post, Huffington Post Denver, DailyCamera

Google News updates for the Boulder fire

NIFC National Fire News - only updated periodically but has detailed, official information

Colorado Wildfires Facebook Page

WILDCAD - Choose a Colorado site to get dispatch updates

Help for those affected

A call center has been established. Residents can call 303-413-7730 for information.
Sparkplace Forum - dedicated to helping those affected by the fire

FourMileFireHelp - forum for those affected with losing home, animals, food, etc. 

Miscellaneous

Boulder weather forecast products and warnings

Collaborative Google Map of fire

View Boulder Canyon Fire 10/29/10 in a larger map

Alternate Google Map


View Boulderfire Domefire BoulderCanyonFire in a larger map

Uniden Home Patrol - a new kind of scanner

Radio scanners are playing an interesting role in the use of social media in disasters - for instance people listening to local scanner traffic and tweeting the latest updates. A big boon to this has been the live audio feeds available on Radio Reference. However, we're not always by a computer or able to connect to the internet during an incident, so a radio scanner is an excellent piece of any disaster kit or for anyone interested in keeping up with events. The widespread move by public safety to digital, trunked systems though has meant that programming a radio scanner to work correctly for the area you are in requires pretty high technical skills and a lot of time, and even just choosing the right scanner is complicated (see my post on this). So I'm very happy to see the Uniden HomePatrol-1 come to market. This really is a revolutionary kind of scanner that just about anyone can use. It comes linked with the RadioReference database, so programming the scanner is as simple as typing in your ZIP code and selecting the kinds of broadcast (police, fire, etc) you wish to receive. It does just about any system - analog, digital, vhf, uhf, 800Mhz and so on. It's probably not everyone's cup of tea, but for someone who wants to just get listening with the minimum of hassle, it seems perfect.

Twitter for 911 calls - is it really useful?

Twitter has recently proved its usefulness in a variety of disasters and emergency situations (see my blog post on this). But what about as a backup to the 911 system? In most cases, a person in distress who has access to Twitter on their mobile device would also be able to make a 911 call (or whatever the local emergency number is). However, there are common circumstances where this might not be so: a person is in a poor reception area and can only send text messages; they are under threat and need to ask for help covertly; they are in odd locations (e.g. international waters) and it is not clear how to get assistance; or they are in a disaster area and 911 infrastructure is down or is overloaded. Some of these may be addressed by the enhanced 911 system ability to receive text messages, but it is not clear yet how this will pan out. Twitter is already there and it works.

In these kinds of circumstance, anecdotal media reports (see for example this USA Today article) indicate success in that if a person has enough followers (how many is enough?) one of them will likely see a distress message in time, and call 911 (assuming there is enough information to locate the individual). Of course having geotagged tweets can help with this (although if a person is in poor cellphone coverage area assisted GPS will likely not work). But it seems like it would be useful for there to be some way to "elevate" your tweets in an emergency, to stand out against the background chatter. Some way to say "I really need help now" that stands out, like a CB channel 9 or Marine Channel 16.

The obvious way to do this is with a hashtag. Let's say we had a dedicated "I need emergency help" hashtag that could be monitored by agencies (even constrained to a geographic area). Well there are problems: first almost every available easy-to-remember hashtag is already widely used for non-emergency messages - just try a search for #911, #helpme, #call911, #needhelpnow, etc. Even if you devised a more unusual (and harder to remember) hashtag like #ineed911help, you'd get overloaded with retweets, commentary on the "does the #ineed911help system work?" etc very quickly. Second, you would likely get too many responses - imagine a 911 center suddenly getting 10000 calls.

Another way would be natural language processing - identifying patterns, particular phrases, etc, that likely constitute a genuine emergency call. Maybe a predictive model based on these terms. But is this really likely to work? And what about the lawsuits when it doesn't work?

So I think that for right now, the best system is no system. But I think this is something we should be talking about. If you have thoughts on this, please leave comments!

Resources for X24 - test of social media in disasters

X24 is a SIMULATED emergency in California based on a scenario of an earthquake centered on Bombay Beach California, followed by a possible Tsunami. . In a real disaster, this page would aggregate resources to help people get the latest information. Here I will do the same for this exercise. For a real event, see, for example, the Boulder Wildfire page.

Twitter search for #x24 OR #californiaearthquake - latest twitter updates
X24 facebook page - latest updates
NEW Google map for reports (also below, zoom out to see bigger picture or click on link)
NEW Another Google Map of reports
Map showing details of epicenter
Map of incoming Tsunami wave
NEW Request Relief - form to fill in to ask for aid

USGS Recent Earthquakes - detailed information about recent worldwide earthquakes including reports submitted by the public

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center - issues tsunami warnings for the pacific and bulletins following major earthquakes

News sites: SignonSanDiego - 10News - CBS8 - NBCSanDiego - KUSI


View X24 Mock California Earthquake Tsunami Map in a larger map

Effectively engaging citizens in disaster and emergency management - 3 steps we need to take

One of my motivations behind creating this blog was to make a better connection between the world of emergency management, and the everyday world most of us inhabit. Emergency management has well thought out tools and resources for preparation, response, mitigation and recovery from emergencies and disasters, from the federal to the local government level, but somehow most of these remain walled off from the general public, and the approach of EM to the public has tended to lack engagement (despite worthwhile efforts like CERT and citizen corps). For example, how many Emergency Management departments even make their hazard analysis easily available to the public? Yet such information can help individuals make much better decisions about how to prepare themselves (see my blog entry on this).  Everyone agrees that the key to disaster planning is engagement of the public, yet participation is very low (see In Case of Emergency blog post). So what is wrong? Well I think part of the problem is that we still think of this as a top-down process - how can we engage them, the citizenry in our processes? This results in a paternalistic approach to citizen involvement (as characterized by the duct tape debacle on the federal level). So what can we do better? Well, here are three things I think we could practically do now to improve citizen involvement in preparing for disasters.

1. Take the social media bull by the horns. At all levels, from local to federal, use social media (Twitter, blogs) to ask questions, not just disseminate information. Employ a programming-whiz intern kid to develop social media apps like Google maps for your local community. Ask people to submit their resources. Give prizes for social media resources voted the most useful. Be honest and ask for input on matters for which we are ill prepared. Just get on board and do it properly, rather than in a "I don't quite understand this but I know I'm supposed to have a twitter account" kind of way. If you don't believe this is important, see "10 reasons social media is important in a real crisis"

2. Start true innovation in the use of technology in Emergency Management. Identify where the rest of the world is technologically way ahead of the EM community, and embrace these rather than trying to replicate them in an expensive fashion. Buy everyone involved in EM an iPad. Employ people to write apps for EM. Give these away free to everyone, not just emergency managers. This could be done cheaply and effectively, while engaging citizenry in the process. Federally, start an equivalent of Innocentive for finding solutions to hard problems. Get out of the grants-expensive vendor model.

3. Find ways to give people real, concrete qualifications and powers rather than nominal ones. Work with universities and training institutes to let people train as EMT's or firefighters for free, then use them in a real official capacity when resources are stretched. Give them free BLS kits. Employ volunteer directors (and give them real power) who actively recruit key members of a community who can help in disasters. Talk to survivalists about how to scale up their worst-case-scenario planning to a local community (see my blog post on this).