There Are Benefits and a Few Risks with Using Social Media in a Disaster

Hurricane Harvey is proving the value for government to use social media when responding to disasters. This is something I've preached for years with a few converts, but not many.

There are two stories to share on this. See this one where I'm quoted, Hurricane Harvey shows benefits, risks of turning to social media in disaster.

And then there is this NPR story, Residents, Police Turn to Social Media to Communicate Amid Harvey.

You cannot tell people to only call 911 for help — when your 911 center is overloaded or, in some cases, not functional. People, like water, will see a way to get their needs out to the world, and social media is a tool they are using today. This is why it is not enough to broadcast information via your Facebook and Twitter accounts. You also need to be "listening" to what is being said. There are three advantages:

1. Rumor control: You will know what is being said that is incorrect and you can provide good accurate information via your social media channels to correct the information
2. Situational awareness: Monitoring social media lets you know what areas are being the most impacted and what the needs are in your community, region and state. Twitter posts can be automatically geo-coded to a map!
3. Alternative to 911: It is not your ideal situation, but if the "official channels" are not working, use the tools that are available to respond to requests (as the NPR story above detailed).

For the last six years I've worked to have a tool developed to help obtain the situational awareness and rumor control functions listed above. It could also help with categorizing requests and locations from citizens using Twitter. That tool is FirstToSee.

Unfortunately agencies in this region were not interested in using it in any significant way. We had the National Weather Service as one who bought into the use. And, it did not cost anything, zip, nada, no up-front cost, no ongoing payments. Due to that lack of interest, the plug has been pulled on the product (I was surprised to still see the website up). 

At my parent organization, the Pacific Northwest Economic Regionand our Center for Regional Disaster Resilience, we would like to have this tool remain operational. Please contact me if you are a company or other type of organization that would want to partner with us and invest in bringing this program to agencies and even businesses that want a tool to help them manage their social media. It can be 100 percent operational within days, and it works worldwide!