We are recommending that C.E.R.T teams and other segments of the Citizen Corps be trained in Social Media monitoring and response.
Crisis-mapping provides incremental intelligence to a broader audience allowing neighbors to assist neighbors in need. This can reduce the demand on traditional response organizations and even alleviate non-emergency calls in local channels that can already be overwhelmed. However, this very public bird’s eye view into local incidental needs can also trigger a flood of humanitarian aid if not handled properly. This can further tax already strained resources. Often the map initiators lack sufficient expertise to effectively manage incidents presented at the onset of disaster. Training teams in advance who are from the local area and transitioning these maps to the local community as soon as possible is key to effective crisis management.
Generally speaking the C.E.R.T. community seems interested and potentially well positioned to train in support not only in crisismapping but in support of Emergency Management in monitoring social media. However, implementing a volunteer training program available to all Citizen Corps teams, instead of just C.E.R.T. may be the most effective way of fast tracking the rapid development of skilled volunteers. This approach fits within the NRF and can quickly train a large corps of volunteers who can support their local community. We're submitting the recommendation to Citizen Corps but also wanted feedback from the thinktank on this approach.
Comments (18)
Federal agencies tasked with disaster response/recovery need to have dedicated personnel with access and high level training to monitor and contribute to SM during incidents. It has become critical to mobilize this resource immediately. As Garald Baron points out. "Now is Too Late".
SM is part of the whole community concept. SM is yet to be understood by high level response personnel as evident during the Great American Shakeout held in May? It must be integral to all responding personnel.
This could start in community *DNR agencies.
They should create C.E.R.T. training centers and programs as they are the most familiar with the areas natural resources like water.
* Department of Natural Resources.
Federal funding is not available for any Volunteer organization at this time. All are being shutdown. There are non federal funded organizations in existence at this time that specialize with this technology. You will not find what you are looking for in the IS courses.
Nice thought. I live in an area where it can take over a year to get into a CERT class. Out of the 6,000 people in my town, only 6 have taken the training. I think part of it is time constraints because most of us work 1-2 towns from where we live. We tried to get a CERT class going locally (30-person minimum), but only got 6-7 people who could make it. We belong to the CERT group 2 towns over.
With the FEMA Courses online and available to the general public. The only things stopping people from gaining atleast a moderate understanding of the organizational design and operations of critical situations is just not doing the courses. The individuals have to desire the knowledge and be willing to do the studies needed to complete the courses. I do believe more public information about the courses available would be a good start to teach folks about Disasters and Operations. The question is how to reach more people with the information of the availability of the Free Courses.
Crisis Commons has been doing work with social media for some time now including vetting messages and mapping situational reporting.
The effectiveness of SM can only be measured by the actual number of people SM has assisted during a disaster. How can this be measured?
"This approach fits within the NRF and can quickly train a large corps of volunteers who can support their local community. We're submitting the recommendation to Citizen Corps but also wanted feedback from the thinktank on this approach."
YOU WANT FUNDS ALLOCATED FOR THIS?
I DISAGREE IN FUNDING TRAINING FOR SM SITU AWARENESS.
I am sorry. I do not support utilizing CERT membership to assist in my media management.
CERT missions are determined by sponsor's needs and priorities. CERT may add input to Situational Awareness but anything else is beyond CERT intended capabilities.
The function of CERT is to assist not to direct. If anything CERT should be traing in Volunteer Management as volunteers are a very valuable resourse and need to be managed properly.
It appears that this idea is poorly understood. Crisis Mappers has clearly broken new ground in crowdsourcing for disasters. It has MONSTROUS potential for contributing to situational awareness by leveraging a large pool of technical volunteers who are unaffected by the disaster. Recent examples are amazing (Haiti, Queensland). http://crisismappers.net/ There are other similar volunteer organizations. This potential needs to be harnessed, not controlled. It can’t be stopped. It will happen with or without official sanction.
And they need to be told what format to transmit their location data in. Street addresses are worthless once the signs are gone, burned over, structures gone....a solution exists. US NATIONAL GRID. USNG standardization is the #1 ranked issue on this Think Tank. It needs to be established to all so that at least a few in the crowd are sending good location data. Smartphone app writers, users, etc. need much more awareness on USNG. A map without a grid is just a picture. Unfortunately the google/yahoo/iPhone paradigm is nothing but nice pictures all day long. A KISS iphone app is this one: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/milgps/id405835358?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2
All CERT teams need to know & use USNG.
crisis mappers/mapping is one thing - social media is another, they each/all have different functions. there would need to be totally different training as such. herein lies one of the problems - what do you teach in such a course? what about new social media sites that surface - how/when are these integrated. this idea is good but a bit erroneous.
As a social media manager, I like the idea. Here's what the CERT home page says: "CERT members can assist others in their neighborhood or workplace following an event when professional responders are not immediately available to help."
In this new age of media, one of the greatest challenges is sifting through the heaps of information and getting what's most important to bubble to the top. Twitter helps by giving "Top" results, or the ones that have been retweeted the most. Helping citizens enter in to the online dialogue to gain situational awareness, and provide answers when possible can be of tremendous value.
Training locals to help locals is what it's all about. Watching a disaster from a regional, bird's eye view is one thing, but being able to focus on a particular community can be more manageable at the local level, especially when many local emergency managers don't use social media at all, or don't have the resources to use them.
As far as coordinating the flood of humanitarian aid, there are many examples of locals creating facebook pages or own Web pages to do so. After Irene, a few Vermonters set up a page that they hope could serve as a model for all states (VTResponse.com: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110921/NEWS02/109210301/Web-savvy-innovators-connect-helpers-those-need-after-Irene?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE ). These of course are organic, and often spring up on their own, without any direct training.
But it is important to consider where social media will take us during future disasters, and it would be nice (resources or not), to bring those who want to participate in CERT up to speed on social media in disaster response.
From www.securitymanagement.com yesterday: Programs like Citizen Corps have been grossly underfunded even though they leverage voluntarism at the state and local levels. - Professor Stephen Flynn, founding co-director of the new George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security at Northeastern University http://www.securitymanagement.com/news/think-tank-perspective-interview-with-dr-stephen-flynn-009397
Similar Facebook example in Minneapolis:
http://www.facebook.com/mplstornado
and a corresponding news article:
http://tinyurl.com/3jb39pt
Thanks for your response Savannah. In a collaborative experiment with the U.S. Navy Post Graduate School and three CERT Teams as well as with other partners, Humanity Road explored training a local team for Microtasking in crisis mapping and social media monitoring and it went well. You can read more about it here http://www.humanityroad.org/_blog/HR_Top_Picks/post/CRX/ We have performed and trained social media monitoring for our organization as well as others for exercises as well as real disasters including Katrina, Hurricane Ike, Haiti, Libya Crisismap, Hurricane Irene, Chicago SnOMG, Tuscaloosa Crisismap, Christ Church Crisismap, as well as many others. Organic and spontaneous social media responses are great and fill a neighbor to neighbor need. But local government and local EMA must take a proactive approach by identifying a lead agency or volunteer group to monitor for these, and monitor for service delivery. We have often found pleas for rescue or supplies where the need had already been serviced yet a good Samaritan reading an old report launched an effort to support it. Spontaneous crisis mapping is great for situational awareness but the maps and the process must have appropriate closure steps to help the public move on and prevent over servicing. Someone needs to be tasked to say, "this need has been confirmed, and it has been filled, please mark it as filled on the map" Local Volunteer corps such as CERT, or other Citizen Corp volunteers are a good choice for this type of program and if your community is interested please feel free to reach out to us. FYI, this is a low cost initiative. In our founding year, Humanity Road volunteers responded to 72 events in 53 countries and our expenses were less than $5,000. Below is a link to a PDF of our annual report. Its not as costly as some might suspect. If anyone wants to talk with me about it, more in depth, I'm available in linkedin or you can reach me through our collaborate page on our website. And thanks for responding with your feedback. Its greatly appreciated!
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