USGS has a website for "Did you feel it" to allow people to report on earthquakes that were felt - http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/. A similar type of approach from other hazard partners would be helpful (NWS, USGS, NOAA, etc).
We know of NOAA's "Turn Around Don't Drown" message, but having a way to report data in a standard way, identifying your location, answering basic questions, etc would be helpful.
This same information is not only helpful / useful for responders to help see reports of what is going on, but it helps those in the scientific community create better "hazard maps" in order to help anticipate future events and predict potential impact.
There needs to be a way to connect all of these dots, but by coordinating with the appropriate community that needs to be the lead. Just as USGS is the lead for earthquakes and volcanoes, NWS / NOAA needs to be the lead for weather related events, etc. This will help to promote trusted relationships with the community that is best designed for that effort.
As emergency managers, we don't need to manage that information (don't have the time and other things should be taking up our time, not this), but knowing it is taken care of by someone else frees us up to focus on what we need to focus on.
The results of this information also need to be available like the data is from USGS. This helps the research community outside of government interact with the data as well so it doesn't get stuck in a file w/o being used by others.
Comments (7)
"Just as USGS is the lead for earthquakes and volcanoes, NWS / NOAA needs to be the lead for weather related events, etc. This will help to promote trusted relationships with the community that is best designed for that effort."
As soon as organizations and businesses get too large there is less control. This is why government is set up with Federal, State, and City laws and controls. It makes the total more manageable. If there is a way to set this up so that they are manageable and effective this would be helpful to most citizens especially our aging citizens who like the familiar. Thus a name or organization that they can relate to, something simple and easy to understand. A friendly face to go with the organization helps too.
The weather channel and skywarn do a pretty fair job of it. Archived information can be found on the NOAA website.
When organizations fail to provide the public with such a tool, another tool is created or used to accommodate the public’s needs. In 2011 the go-to tool was social media. However, currently social media provides emergency responders only some help while managing an incident. Social media can be difficult to manage as an emergency manager already wears multiple hats when an incident begins. In many circumstances staffing capabilities do not allow emergency managers to track social media until the recovery process begins, if ever.
From a geospatial perspective, all-hazard reporting is critical and can be vital throughout the response and recovery phases. Currently it can take days to receive a defined tornado path when emergency responders need to know where damage is and how much of it is there. Some public input can be very helpful in maintaining an incident and creating a medium that both the public and emergency manager’s access would be a fantastic tool for both audiences that has the potential to save lives and get the job done in the quickest and most effective manner.
The 2011 tornado season would have found an all-hazard tool for reporting damage from a location useful in providing residents, businesses, as well as emergency responder’s information pertaining to the hazard. Such a tool would be vital in providing those affected in the most efficient way by pushing information to local responders more effectively. Social media was a key factor throughout the response and recovery phases in Joplin. With the successes of social media the capabilities of an all-hazard tool are limitless.
9-1-1 will do just fine, also the radio stations will get plenty of calls also
quidam, you are right - 9-1-1 can take in calls to a scene. However, what happens when phone lines are down? Data networks are still up and social media sites are then utilized if they weren't already. There needs to be redundancy set into place for responders - we can't count on cell towers, especially during an emergency.
There should be a database that accessable to anybody in this tank , that consist of all floods, hurricanes, tornados,earthquakes,major fires,and any other tragedy you could think of. If we had these all on line-nation-wide ,we could see what was done before.
There should be some lines or groups sponsered by the weather service or FEMA who would have all the data from previous fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and other natural disasters. If it was in a database, we could check to see how things were handled and what was needed