One of the most interesting developments in Emergency Management is the nexus between convergent volunteers and social media. One of the groups that tries to walk that line is Crisis Commons, a global movement creating virtual communities of volunteers using their technical expertise to help out in disasters.
You’ll hear more from me about these guys. There is a feature article for the magazine in the works, they are doing a breakout session at the upcoming IAEM conference, they testified before Congress in May, they have the support of FEMA. They collaborate with other VTC’s (volunteer technical communities), like CrisisMapping and Humanity Road. Not sure what kinds of things this approach can accomplish? Think the Katrina PeopleFinder Project, or the Christchurch Recovery Map. Be prepared to use Skype or Twitter (@crisiscommons), and think in cutting edge concepts like crowd sourcing and cloud computing.
Also, you have to understand the self-organizing process of chaos theory. It isn’t particularly organized, there are no real leaders. This is not traditional ICS.
This morning there was a major earthquake in Turkey. Crisis Commons is monitoring the situation, open to requests for help from response organizations and registering volunteers. The needs of this disaster will dictate what happens from here. Want more information? Here it is.
