Social Media & Emergency Response

Russ Johnson

Social Media, Crowd Sourcing & Emergency Response

• How does GIS affect and Improve our ability to manage Social Media and Crowd Sourced Information ?

• What are some of the lessons learned?

• Where are we today?

Emergency Response

What are the Essential information Requirements?

• What’s is Happening ?

• Where is it Happening?

• What are the Impacts ?

• How did it Happen

• How does Social Media help? What are the Challenges?

What is Happening?

• The world is watching and wants to help

• Rumors will run rampant and be live-tweeted during crisis events

• Images and videos, no matter how graphic, will surface

• The amount of information available will become stifling

What is Happening?

• There will be volumes of social media concerning what is happening

• The accuracy of this information will be hard to determine

Gulf Oil Spill

Where is it Happening?

• GIS can begin to focus the information

• Filter the incoming information by Geography

• What is being said by those near the event?

• Cut down the volume!

What are the Impacts?

• How do we determine the initial impact?

• What could the “downstream” effects be?

• What do we need learn more about?

Lessons Learned - Boston Marathon

• Understanding how it happened

• Thousands of photos, tweets, etc.

• Organizing the information and making sense of it

Summary

How does GIS help us deal with Social Media?

• GIS can help us understand and filter Social Media by Geography – Where

• When integrated with other GIS data, helps us understand

Potential Impacts - Potential Impacts

GIS helps us Understand how it happened

When, Where, and Who

Are we prepared to utilize Social Media?

- Do you the ability to intake, organize, and assess the data? (Big Data)

- Do you have the ability to Map it (location is available)

- Do you have the ability to Share it with the appropriate personnel?

- We still have work to do to utilize Social Media and Crowd Sourced Data in time sensitive situations

Summary

Thank You