Last week I attended the ISCRAM conference in Seattle, WA. ISCRAM, or Information Systems for Crisis and Response, brings together the leading scientists who conduct research on and design tools for communication in crises and disasters. In the past, social and information scientists seemed to be on the outer margins of the conference. This year, there were four sessions focusing on collaboration and social networking - many of which discussed the use of new media in disaster and crisis response, specifically examining the use of Twitter.

If you are interested in learning more about how Twitter is actively used by members of the public on the ground, you're going to want to take a look at these papers. I'll point out a couple of key papers that I heard presented (including my own research), here.

Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster (Jeannette Sutton, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs). This paper examined the use of Twitter following the Tennessee Valley Coalash disaster of 2008. Sutton describes the use of Twitter as a backchannel communication mechanism to alert the major media to the environmental devastation wrought on the Tennessee Valley; the distributed location of major Twitter stream contributors; the types of information shared following the toxic event; and the lack of participation at the local level among those most directly impacted, emergency management and public officials, and organizational representatives from the TVA.

Pass It On?: Retweeting in Mass Emergencies (Kate Starbird and Leysia Palen; University of Colorado at Boulder) This paper looked at the phenomenon of Retweeting (RT) on Twitter, identifying the kinds of information that is shared among Twitter users and how that information propagates over time. Using sophisticated data capture and visualization models, they depict the flow of information across a variety of information sectors and the RT process.

Tweak the Tweet: Leveraging Microblogging Proliferation with a Prescriptive Grammar to Support Citizen Reporting (Kate Starbird, University of Colorado at Boulder and Jeannie Stamberger, Carnegie Mellon University). Starbird explains a process identified at the Random Hacks of Kindness conference and tested during recent events such as the response to the Haiti earthquake, showing that syntax adoption for Twitterers could lead to machine readable text in the future. The caveat: training the everyday user to "tweak the tweet" is problematic without having champions who can model Tweet syntax in disaster and crises.

Microblogging for Citizen Communication: Examination of Twitter Use in Response to a 2009 Violent Crisis in Seattle, Washington (Thomas J. Heverin and Lisl Zach; Drexel University). Haverlin presented preliminary findings on the use of Twitter following the murder of four police officers in the Seattle region. He showed how members of the public used Twitter as a communication channel to share information on the event, the suspect, and the final hours leading to the suspect's demise. His micro level analysis also examined how the crowd challenged unpopular opinions on Twitter and even worked to censor those who disagreed with the majority consensus.

While the proceedings for this year's conference are not yet posted, they will be soon. You can check here http://www.iscram.org/ for proceedings from previous conferences.

Consider the following scenario: you and your closest buddies are sitting around a table in a conference room. The doors are closed, the projector is on, and you are paying careful attention to the presenter who has the distinct pleasure of lecturing to you immediately following a carbohydrate-rich lunch of pasta. At some point, a fire alarm begins to go off. You sniff the air; it doesn't smell like smoke. You look around; no one is moving from their seats, the speaker continues to drone on, the conference organizers seem unfazed by the noise. You turn to your table-mates who each shrug their shoulders indicating "I don't really know what it means." Murmurs in the crowd begin as people question whether this alarm indicates the need for action or perhaps whether it is just an annoyance that should be ignored. Before doing anything drastic, such as taking a self-protective measure like evacuating the building, you do something common to most everyone who has ever been faced with a potential risk scenario - you 'mill about' and ask questions in order to make sense of the information and determine what should be done about it.

Now shift this scenario just a bit. No longer are you and your buddies sitting around a table in a conference room, but you are distributed across a geographical area. You're watching a webinar after lunch and you're participating through a virtual chat mechanism. At the same time, you have Tweetdeck and an instant messaging program open on your desktop, your mobile phone is attached to your hip, and the TV is on in the background. You receive a text message from your daughter who says that something is happening in the downtown area and it is drawing crowds of people. You start to see geo-coded Tweets appear from that same location where people in the crowd begin to comment and even post pictures to Flickr about what is taking place in the vicinity. Your own attention is diverted from the webinar as you begin to communicate through your social networks to inquire about what is taking place in the downtown area. Before taking any additional action, you seek out information, discuss it, and then make a decision on what to do next. Essentially, you eMill (thanks to Michele Wood of Cal State Fullerton for this concept).

eMilling is similar to the socio-behavioral activity of milling that occurs following every alert, warning, or crisis notification that is sent. Before a person or group of persons takes protective action, they confirm with their peers, colleagues, and the geographically proximate public what the danger might be, how to interpret the risk, and what actions should be taken. With the advent of new technologies, milling has moved from the physical space of a hazard to the electronic space of networked communications. Never before have we had the opportunity to connect to people so quickly or to observe individual and communal decision making in relation to an impending hazard. This is milling moved to the online space of the internet. It is eMilling.

Jeannette Sutton is a disaster sociologist, specializing in alerts, warnings and crisis communication using socila media.

Over the past few weeks I've been watching an amazing online social movement take place as 'Volunteer Technical Communities' (VTC) have created a virtual response to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. Several posts back, I wrote about a group of hackers who joined forces in the Silicon Valley for a daylong Random Hacks of Kindness event. Weeks later I wrote about Crisis Camps held simultaneously in Washington D.C., Denver, and New York City in response to the Haiti earthquake. Since that time, the Volunteer Technical Community has truly come to life in a worldwide and distributed fashion through the efforts of a small band of organizers in the U.S. called Crisis Commons. (The Crisis Commons website is worth a quick peek if you are interested in seeing how a bunch of volunteers generate and coordinate information using a wiki, Facebook, Twitter, and GoogleWave.) As of last week, Crisis Commons had hosted more than 45 Crisis Camps internationally in response to the recent earthquake events and more are planned for the future. You can follow Crisis Commons activities on Twitter using #CrisisCamp.

What does this volunteer technical community have to do with emergency management and disaster response and recovery? An article posted in the New York Times today provides an excellent summary and explanation of how crowd-sourced information via one socio-technology called Ushahidi (meaning "testimony" in Swahili) may become the true wave of the future for all sorts of crises. A few key points made by Giridharadas include:

The old paradigm was one-to-many: foreign journalists and aid workers jet in, report on calamity and dispense aid with whatever data they can get. The new paradigm is many-to-many-to-many: the victims are re-imagined as agents who supply on-the-ground data; a self-organizing mob of global volunteers translates the text messages and helps to orchestrate relief; journalists and aid workers use this information to target the most pressing problems. In this instantaneous, virtualizing age, that kind of testimony [from the old paradigm] confronts a new variety: a testimony of aggregate, average, good-enough truths.

While many continue to ask about the value of crowd-generated information for disaster response, the recent efforts of the Volunteer Technical Community point to strategies for capturing information and making it useful to on the ground responders. This social system of emergent volunteers points to one potential solution for harnessing information and turning it into actionable intelligence.
Perhaps one future strategy at the local level will be to mimic the actions of the VTC by utilizing trained CERT members as human sensors who can track information online and direct it to the right channels. Does your community use this strategy? If so, we want to hear from you.

About the author: Jeannette Sutton is a disaster sociologist who specializes in public responses to alerts and warnings, with a focus on the uses of social media for communication in disaster.

Quite a few journalists and bloggers have provided commentary on the newly released information that DHS is monitoring social media during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Much of what I've read has raised the specter of Big Brother with concerns about first amendment rights, freedom of speech, and privacy. That the Federal Government might be observing and monitoring publicly accessible information in an attempt to thwart possible terrorist attacks or other malicious activity is an 'outrage'. And yet over the past four weeks we've read over and over and over again that social media has been instrumental in bringing information and awareness about the plight of Haitians affected by a massive earthquake to observers around the world. In the months prior we've seen the power of social networking services as they connect disaster victims to first responders when critical infrastructure is flooded and crushed. Through social media, we've witnessed the unstoppable flow of information out of countries that, try as they might, have been unable to squelch the public chatter about what is occurring on the ground and among its citizens.

If the Olympics were taking place in the United States, the two-week long set of contests would be under the observation of the Secret Service and would be considered a National Special Security Event. These games, where contestants from opposing countries stand shoulder to shoulder, also bring worldwide attention. As with other NSSEs, the Olympics also hold the possibility for civil unrest through demonstrations (such as acts perpetrated by anti-Olympic protestors who smashed windows and spray painted store fronts this past weekend) or potentially violent attacks on Olympians (such as in 1972 when 11 Israeli team members were killed in the Olympic Village in Munich) or spectators (such as during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta).

I may be going out on a limb here, but it seems to me that given the power of social media to provide insight into a location, an event, or even public commentary, coupled with the security risks and hazards associated with a world-focusing event like the Olympics, it is a prudent strategy to monitor the ongoing communications among the public who are using public communication channels. Furthermore, it seems that it would be irresponsible to ignore the potential insights that could be obtained from these communications. In the end, wont government agencies be held to a high standard to protect U.S. citizens and allies and to prevent possible malicious activity during an event such as the Olympics?

Two years ago, the Democratic National Convention came to Denver, Colorado and I observed the activities of the locals and the federal agencies as they monitored the media. Few protocols existed to conduct systematic observations of online communications channels in real time; a lack of resources and a lack of awareness of the potential information that might be obtained from the information media rounded out those efforts. In only 18 months, we've seen the emergence of not only a widespread recognition of the potential value of information flowing through new media, but also an approach to monitor, assess, and analyze chatter to produce situational awareness in the event that an incident occurs. Hopefully, the games will continue in a peaceful manner; but should something occur, preventative activities via communications monitoring has the potential to lead to incredibly useful insights for operations and increase response capabilities.

Today techies across the U.S. and in the U.K. are joined together in a collaborative effort to develop tools and technologies that will be of use to responders and victims of the Haiti earthquake disaster. Volunteers with tech skills ranging from programming, natural language processing, and mapping (among just a few) are working on various projects that have the potential to connect people to vital information resources and speed rescue and recovery efforts.

Teams are gathered in London, Washington D.C., Brooklyn, Denver, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles.

Representing the "non-techie side," I'm observing the bustling activities of the two teams working here in Denver. One group is collaborating on a project called "Tweak the Tweets," a project identified during the Random Hacks of Kindness and driven by researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder . A second is considering tasks of translating tags being used to filter information on flickr, delicious, and blogs in English into French Creole. A host of projects are being developed in the other five sites.

You can follow the activities of the Crisis Camps on Twitter @crisiscamp, or by observing twitter hashtags #cchaiti, #ccla, and #ccden.

This emergent network of disaster hackers comes on the heels of several crisiscamps launched in the past year. Led from within, no organization is leading and yet this self-organized group of creative and concerned global citizens is reaching out to assist in a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions. It is yet another example of an emergent group that has identified a set of unmet needs and altruistically gather together to address them using their various skill-sets.

The earthquake in Haiti is one of this hemisphere's worst disasters in history. With nearly one third of the Haitian population directly affected, every person in the country is reeling in the aftermath of incredible destruction. Vast attention is being directed from around the world as the international community observes and struggles to comprehend the magnitude of devastation wrought on this impoverished country.

In the aftermath of destruction, communication tools are an information lifeline. This has been facilitated by new media that in less than a decade has revolutionized our ability to observe and connect to each other.

Networked communications have made it possible to post pictures and videos increasing the speed of information flow. Social networking services have enabled the sharing of condolences and sympathy as well as the rapid flow of donations for relief efforts. Online registries of missing and surviving persons make it possible for families to gain information from afar.

With the devastation, traditional communications infrastructure collapsed, but the Internet and short messaging systems remain viable mechanisms for emergency information and situational updates. This networked communications infrastructure has proven to be resilient in the face of disaster and has enabled information sharing in ways previously impossible. People are communicating via text messaging, Twitter, and Skype to friends and family around the world.

Just six short years ago, the world's attention was turned to the tsunami in South East Asia. While new media were available for information sharing at the time, limited use was observed. Flickr, however, became a key resource and mechanism for sharing images from the disaster as well as pictures of the missing. This is in contrast with what was observed following the World Trade Center disaster on September 11, 2001. Following 9/11, images were shared not via networked technologies, but through posters and picture placards posted at makeshift memorials throughout the city. In contrast with photocopied posters, networked communications have the potential to reach thousands of observers in a very short period of time.

Only six months ago, when Hurricane Odnoy drenched the Phillipines, worldwide observers watched the devastation unfold through citizen-generated images and texts through social networking services such as Twitter. Similar to the current situation in Haiti today, information was shared through resilient infrastructure when landlines and cellular communications were compromised as a result of the disaster damage. Citizen journalism via new media has become a common feature of information gathering and sharing in our everyday lives. During a disaster, it is a lifeline and a source of virtual capital connecting the worldwide community of onlookers to those most directly affected.

This week, the UN Foundation released a new report called "New Technologies in Emergencies and Conflicts: The Role of Information and Social Networks," commissioned by the United Nations Foundation & Vodafone Foundation Technology Partnership. The report, written by Diana Coyle (an economist at the University of Manchester) and Patrick Meier (co-director of the Program on Crisis Mapping and Early Warning at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative), looks at innovation in the use of technology along the timeline of crisis response, from emergency preparedness and alerts to response and rebuilding. It profiles organizations whose work is advancing the frontlines of innovation, offers an overview of international efforts to increase sophistication in the use of IT and social networks in emergencies, and provides recommendations for how governments, aid groups and international organizations can leverage this innovation to improve community resilience.

Importantly, this report is written for the practitioner audience. It is heavy on case studies and examples from recent efforts at technology innovation and implementation, making it an interesting and valuable read for those who are searching for a broad, informative perspective on international measures to integrate technology into areas affected by crisis, disaster, and conflict. However, it draws very lightly from existing theoretical and academic research. As an empiricist, I find this to be its downfall. For instance, there is a significant lack of reference to the existing body of knowledge on alerts and warnings in disaster. This body of research spans more than 50 years of empirical research and is the basis for many warning programs and systems in the U.S. Acknowledgement or even attention to key studies would help to shed some light on human behaviors leading to evidence based practices for public alerts and warnings. This is evident in the section on Public Education and the Role of Media, where one interviewee suggests that formal public education campaigns are not very effective in changing preparedness behavior. Perhaps some attention to existing research would have explained what educational campaigns are successful and why.

Despite my critique about the lack of research supporting the claims made in this report, it is a very important document that delivers a summary of international efforts on the uses of new technologies for disasters and crisis response. By linking information access to community resiliency and then showing how new technology channels facilitate communication, the authors make a solid point that new information and communication technologies play a very important role in emergency management and disaster response and are a necessary ingredient for all effective communication strategies.

The UN Foundation invites people to submit questions to the author's of the report and other subject matter experts via Twitter (using the hashtag #tech4dev) or the UN Foundation's Facebook page.

This Saturday, December 5, DARPA (a federal agency charged with the development of new technologies) will place 10 large red balloons in various locations across the country and they want you to help find them. Of course their whereabouts are already known by a select few, but the goal of this prize competition is to examine the speed and accuracy of nationally networked individuals who will identify and map each of the locations using social media. The first team to send in an accurate list of balloon locations will win $40,000.

More than 2,500 persons have registered to take part in this "Network Challenge." One emergency management organization in Johnson County, Kansas which values the importance of social media and wide-area collaboration, is enlisting the help of other offices across the country. (Johnson County, Kansas is also holding a daylong conference this January on new media in crisis.) If you happen to find a balloon, you can post the information to the Johnson County Facebook site that has been set up just for this event.

Recent examples of crowdsourced information and networked technologies have shown that distributed networks coupled with local boots on the ground all using social media have the potential to carry information at phenomenal speed with excellent accuracy. But, participants should beware … DARPA has warned that some information available online may be intentionally misleading and inaccurate. The balloons will only be visible on Saturday, December 5 during daylight hours. Once they have been taken down, balloon-spotters will be required to use their networked connections to find the locations of any balloons they did not already locate. It will be up to competitors to assess the validity of information and verify each identified location in a wiki-like fashion.

This event will unfold online as participants share information through open and closed networks. The submission deadline is listed on the DARPA website as December 14. I'll be very curious to see how volunteer balloon-spotters emerge and converge into an organized network of information points. Shall we place wagers on how long it actually takes to complete the task?

The digital divide often refers to those who lack access to computing hardware or software, those who do not have the technological skills (or digital literacy) to use information or communication technologies. These include rural and remote populations without high speed internet access, and demographic segments such as those who are older, of lower socio-economic status, or the infirm. But I raise the question of whether the digital divide might also include those on the opposite end of the spectrum; those who are so 'plugged in' to new media and new communication channels, those who are so intimately connected to their handheld devices and networked technologies, that they miss information that might be shared with the masses through traditional media channels.

Many emergency managers and public officials consider this one of their key issues as they develop means and mechanisms to reach a broader population at risk to hazardous conditions. Indeed, this is one of the reasons cited for establishing Twitter or Facebook profiles and creating aggressive Twitter campaigns. This weekend, however, I read about one of the most creative strategies yet, designed not to reach the Twitter crowd, or the Facebook crowd, but the gaming crowd.

As part of their Empire 2.0 initiative, New York State announced their plans to send alerts issued by the Emergency Management Office over video game networks. For those who spend their time on television plugged in to video games, the Emergency Alert style system will get their attention by tapping into networks such as Xbox LIVE, the PlayStation Network, and the Nintendo WiFi Connection . While few details are available, New York State Deputy CIO Rico Singleton has announced that the plan is in its testing phase.

While we don't yet know how these alerts will be received or acted upon by the New York State youth that are its target, one can be assured that such creative outreach ideas will spur innovation across the United States. This is the beauty of social media; we are no longer limited to traditional dissemination channels or to our own limited capacities to design and innovate for the future. Crowd-sourced information will spur creative solutions and increase the reach of communications across distributed networks.