Social Media, Tsunamis, and Crisis Management

Social Media, Tsunamis, and Crisis Management Brian Shiro NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center March 16, 2011 Social Media Club of Hawaii

Open Government Initiative http://www.whitehouse.gov/Open

Open Government Initiative
President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government as his first executive action on January 21, 2009.
On December 8, 2009, he issued the Open Government Directive with written instructions to every government agency to open its doors and its data to the American people.
“ Enable public safety officials across levels of government to share information in real time and improve response to national disasters.” -Open Government Directive

Social Media is…

Social Networking Sites (SNS)
Blogs and Wikis
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz, etc.
YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, etc.
Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.
govloop, govfresh
slideshare

Social Media affects…

Pew Stats on Social Networking Site (SNS) Use
79% of American Adults used the internet in 2009.
59% adults primarily receive news via the internet (75% from SNS).
46% adults use SNS
37% of internet users contribute to creating or disseminating news.
79% of SNS users on Facebook (median age 33), 19% on Twitter (median age 31)
http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/social-networking.aspx http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx

Social Media and Disasters in Goverment
USGS Mount Redoubt eruptions: @alaska_avo http://www.adn.com/volcano/story/756874.html
USGS Twitter Earthquake Detector: @USGSted (crowdsourcing) http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_usgs http://www.seismosoc.org/publications/SRL/SRL_81/srl_81-2_es/
NWS Storm Reports (crowdsourcing) http://www.srh.noaa.gov/srh/twitter/twitter.php
Several excellent papers with more examples: http://www. jeannettesutton .com/Papers_and_presentations.html
“ Enable public safety officials across levels of government to share information in real time and improve response to national disasters.” -Open Government Directive

NWS Storm Reports

Information flow pre-Twitter Era Too slow and fragile!

Information flow in the Twitter Era Fast, robust, viral!

What is a Tsunami?
A tsunami is a series of long-period waves created by an abrupt disturbance that displaces a large amount of water.
Caused by:

Bullseye: Tsunamis in Hawaii Lines show tsunami travel time to Hawaii in hours. Destructive tsunamis every 7 years on average

Tweets during Samoa Tsunami of 29 Sep 2009
“ tsunami” was #2 keyword during the peak with about 14,000 tweets.

Tweets during Vanuatu Tsunami of 7 Oct 2009
Geographic distribution of tweets tracked from the USGS Twitter Earthquake Detector Project (@USGSted)

Tweets during Chile Tsunami of 27 Feb 2010
“ tsunami” was a top keyword during the peak with about 62,000 tweets.

Tweets during Japan Tsunami of 11 March 2011
“ tsunami” was a top keyword during the peak with about 158,000 tweets.
Tweets coming from Tokyo topped 1,200 per minute, according to Tweet-o-Meter .

Japanese tsunami of March 2011

Community Conversations #hitsunami http://www.hitsunami.info

NOAA and Social Media
Official policy on social media use not established until January 26, 2011.
Foothold in most major social media services already.
Lags behind peer agencies like NASA and USGS.
No official tsunami warning presence … yet.
(We’re working on it!)
http://www.noaa.gov/socialmedia

DoC/NOAA Policy
In 2008, there was a government-wide shutdown of almost every government social media account due to concerns over the default Terms of Service agreements.
NOAA’s experimental Tsunami Warning twitter & facebook accounts were deactivated then.
From 2008-2010, the government negotiated new Terms of Service agreements with many social media services.
On January 26, 2011, the Department of Commerce (under which NOAA falls) issued its “Policy on the Approval and Use of Social Media and Web 2.0.”
http://www.osec.doc.gov/webresources/socialmedia/DOC_Approved_Agreements.html

What’s next?
Automatic tsunami warning tweets & FB posts ~ spring 2011
SMS text messaging service ~ summer 2011
Tsunami.gov portal ~ fall 2011 aggregate all government tsunami websites into one with greatly improved functionality
Extend and enhance services some ideas: crowdsourcing tweets of tsunami observations, live video feeds from the warning centers

Any questions? Brian Shiro @brianshiro [email_address]

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Social Media, Tsunamis, and Crisis Management

by Brian Shiro on Mar 15, 2011

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