An Online Social Network for Emergency Management

An Online Social Network for Emergency Management Connie White, Linda Plotnick, Jane Kushma, Roxanne Hiltz and Murray Turoff

One Place for the Emergency Domain to Interact

We propose to investigate whether the social network paradigm can be used to enable individuals and organizations to collaborate in mutually beneficial ways, in all stages of emergency management: mitigation, preparation, response and recovery.

For our purposes, we would characterize a social network as
Links from and to people with other people, groups or information objects.
Such objects might be messages, photos, videos, wall postings, notifications, current activities, events, widgets, etc.
Such hyper-links are either at one extreme created by intelligent agents or at the other extreme by the people themselves.

Overarching Research Question
Can a Social Network be developed specifically to meet the needs of the emergency domain and be useful and effective for large groups of collaborating emergency professionals and volunteers?

2 Studies Conducted So Far EM Students ISCRAMers Viewed 119 118 Started 80 47 Completed 72 15 Completion Rate 90% 32% Dropouts 8 32 Time For Completion 5 minutes 17 minutes

Rank Order of Best Applications for Social Networks by EM Students
Sharing Information
Communication with Others
Networking
Share documents, files and other digital resources for all.
(tie) Uploading Videos and Locating Experts

Rank Order of Best Applications for Social Networks by ISCRAMers
Damage assessment and disaster intelligence
Citizen engagement or citizen input
Collaborative exercise design and development
Collaborative problem solving
Training or exchange of training material
Consultation for real-time decision making
Best practices exchange
Planning or exchange of planning material
Peer exchanges among and with CERT members
New document evaluation and review

Creative Ways of Using an Online Social Network for Emergency Management
Chat features with Experts
Inform Media/Press of Updates
Training Tutorials, Classes, Research
Trigger Other Technology
Mentoring New Emergency Managers
Specialized Network of Experts
Form Teams
Emergency Notification Systems

Concerns of Using an Online Social Network for Emergency Management
Information Integrity/Corruption/Falsification
User Identification/Credibility/Authenticity
Privacy of Members Compromised
Technology Reliability
Unprofessional Conduct Online (flaming)
Security of Information
Stalkers, Terrorists
Virus or other digital threats

Will it Work?
Will people use it?
Will people perceive and use social networks for serious work?

Microsoft's Vine: Emergency Social Networking pcworld
“ That may sound a lot like a social network , but Vine was built solely as a way to organize and disseminate important information among organizations such as sports teams, church groups, and advocacy organizations, or to stay in touch with neighbors, family, and friends during an emergency. ”
www.vine.net

The End Questions, Comments?

An Online Social Network for Emergency Management

by lplotnick on May 13, 2009

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An Online Social Network for Emergency Management — Presentation Transcript