Giacobe & soule iscram 2014

Social Media for the Emergency Manager in

Disaster Planning and Response

Nicklaus A. GiacobePenn State College of Information Sciences and Technology

Pamela J. SoulePenn State Office of Emergency Management

1College of Information Sciences & Technology

Ist.psu.edu

The Local Level EM

Local Emergency Manager (EM)

Perspective

– Different than national, state or large

municipality EM

– Smaller Scale

– Little or No resources (manpower, $)

– Need to leverage “Force Multipliers” maybe

through social media

College of Information Sciences & Technology

ist.psu.edu2

Direction from FEMA

IS-42 Social Media in

Emergency Management

– Shows some of the

promise of social media

successes

– Shows basics of what

social media is

– No guidance or starting

place for how to develop

a social media presence

– No staffing

recommendationsCollege of Information Sciences & Technology

ist.psu.edu3

Six Potential Use Cases

1. Best practices for general social media use by EMs

2. Social media use for internal command and control

within the EM group

3. Developing situation awareness by monitoring social

media, especially prior to predicable events

4. Communicating disaster preparedness messages

through social media

5. Using social media for gathering damage assessment

information during, or immediately following a crisis

6. Leveraging social media-connected volunteer groups


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“BEST PRACTICES”

Develop and Communicate


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“Best Practices”

Need for clear steps or processes that a

local level EM can follow

– Figure out which SM is used in the community

– Developing audience

– Finding and engaging re-broadcasters

– Response Agency use vs. 911 Center vs. EM

use of social media

– Social Media message creation


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COMMAND AND CONTROL

(C2)

Social media-driven


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Social Media C2

How can the EM Leverage social media

internally for C2 ?

– Single person – uses resources from other

agencies

– EOC Activation – SMS / voice pager / radio

phone list / carrier pigeon?

– Partial EOC Activation and continuous 24 hr

opns


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SITUATION AWARENESS

Monitoring social media to develop


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Situation Awareness

• Can we use Social Media to monitor

what’s going on in a community?

– “Did you feel that?” tweet = earthquake

– Disaster evacuation compliance

– Riots, protests and

large-scale gatherings


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DISASTER PREPAREDNESS

MESSAGES

Using social media to distribute


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Disaster Prep. Messages

Disaster Prep messages are often boring…

– What is the right platform?

– What is the right message to communicate?

– How often?

– How early (or late) compared to pending crisis

– Specific – local context – actionable –

spammed at the right time


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DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

Leveraging social media technologies to assist with


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Damage Assessment

Damage assessment is low-tech and manpower

intensive

– Required for immediate response

– Required for aid

How can we leverage technologies and volunteers

to make this faster/easier?

– Flyover geo-tagged images – but how to assess?

– Drive-by pictures and videos

– Crowdsourced picture submission


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VOLUNTEER GROUPS

Leveraging social media-connected


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Leveraging Volunteer Groups

• How does a local level EM activate a

Crisis Camp?

• Where can a local level EM find a

competent GIS professional to help out for

a few days or weeks?

• Are there local volunteer groups who can

manage technology on behalf of the EM

and not mess everything up?


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CONCLUSION


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Recall: Six Potential Use Cases

1. Best practices for general social media

use by EMs

2. Social media use for internal command

and control within the EM group

3. Developing situation awareness by

monitoring social media, especially prior

to predicable events

4. Communicating disaster preparedness

messages through social media

5. Using social media for gathering damage

assessment information during, or

immediately following a crisis

6. Leveraging social media-connected

volunteer groups


ist.psu.edu18

Giacobe & soule iscram 2014

Social Media

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