Understanding the Power of Social Media in an Emergency

If you can only watch one thing today, pick this.

Understanding the Power of Social Media as a Communications Tool In the Aftermath of Disasters

This is about SMEM, which is the acronym for "Social Media and Emergency Management", coined in Fall 2010 by a few professional emergency managers, folks from non-government voluntary organizations and others interested in how mobile technology and social networks like Facebook and Twitter can be used to engage and help people help each other in the face of a major disaster. This is not about pushing information one-way, it's a multi-faceted conversation.

Craig Fugate, FEMA Administrator, who is testifying today, has a great saying.

If we innovate at the speed of government, we'll never get there. 

He believes that the public is a critical resource during a crisis, not the liability they are currently perceived to be by some agencies. We, the general public, can help amplify whatever messages our Emergency Managers want us to hear, and equally, we can help our first responders get better situational awareness about conditions on the ground before, during and after an incident, such as a storm. Our Police and Fire Departments can't be everywhere at once. We need to help ourselves as much as we can, we now have the tools to do it and I'm going to show you how. 

This is the real reason to be on Facebook, if you're not already there. We need to take advantage of social media channels, and I'll be blogging more about how to do that later.

This concept started to grab attention in Haiti in early 2009, when, as you may know, people talked about lives being saved by victims sending a text message from under the rubble. It was true, and there are now so many anecdotal reports from throughout the world, that the evidence cannot be ignored.  It's now understood that social media is much more than the name implies, or simply another place to broadcast official government information.  These are incredibly powerful tools put in the right hands, which includes every one of us.

An online community of volunteers to help coordinate social media information and add it to maps of disaster areas started to grow immediately following the Haiti earthquake. Heather Blanchard, Co Founder of Crisis Commons is testifying today. Her project grew from 200 people in 2 groups to 2,400 people in 65 groups in 8 countries in about 4 months. 

By August 2010, an American Red Cross had written a White Paper on the topic, and soon after, SMEM was created. I joined the SMEM Community after the December 26th Nor'Easter hit , up on Rt 48 and tore miles of shoreline apart, as well as several houses. Dear friends were devastated, our infrastructure threatened, communication channels all but closed between us and our local government, and amongst ourselves. Where were we for each other? You tell me. I was on Facebook and Twitter, trying to find out what was going one, only to have to wait patiently for the mainstream media to report after the fact, in some cases several days later. It was easier to get information about storms 12,000 miles away than the one down the road! 

I wanted to do something to help change that in our own community and created the "Let's Get SMEM Smart" project for Southold, partnering with our not-for-profit waterfront organization, Southold VOICE. (disclaimer: I'm on the Board). Since then, Chairman John Betsch and I have met with some key townspeople, including government officials, educators and most recently, emergency managers. The response has been very positive, people are excited even. I'd like to give a special shout out here for Supervisor Scott Russell, who immediately embraced the project with amazing enthusiasm and has been proactively pushing it forward ever since.  SMEM misses you Scott, come back soon!

Over coming days, weeks and months, I'll be reaching out to a lot more folks about the role of Social Media and Emergency Management in our community. Without a lot more of you, from all walks of life, and whatever your age, this project cannot succeed. Other communities learned the hard way that the time to collaborate is well before a crisis event. I don't want us to have to learn that lesson the same way. Mindful that the official start of hurricane season is June 1st, with the most active period starting mid-August. Predictions for this year are something like 17 hurricanes of which 3 are expected to be a category 3. Orient becomes an a new island in a category 2. Remember 1938? Me neither, but I've seen the photos. Time is not on our side.

According to statistics, 70% of you are already on the social networks, and there are 1.4 million people in Suffolk County.  If you're interested to know more, or to volunteer to help, or even to get on a mailing list for more information, please contact me. I'm easy to find here, through the Southold VOICE Facebook page, or talk to me on twitter: @SoutholdVOICE . If you don't know how to do that, this is the place to ask.

The live video stream starts at 10am, but if you're reading this too late, there will be a link to a recording posted after the event, which I'll post-edit or add below if it's not on the same page.

Enjoy the beautiful sunshine for the rest of the day!