D3.3.2. Final report on the strategic use of emerging communication technologies for crisis stakeholders

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report examines the use of new technologies to satisfy strategic communication goals of relevant stakeholders during crises. These are examined at three different levels, namely:

• among responders/law enforcement agencies
• between responders and the public
• among the public themselves

The findings regarding the strategic use of emerging technologies by different stakeholders will be used in conjunction with WP4, which focuses on emergency communication by the public.

The report includes three parts, one treating the strategic communication goals, another treating the interoperability issues facing social media today and their relevance to crisis management, and a third one presenting emergency response scenarios and the role of social media in them. As the first part has identified, there are four strategic goals relating to communication that are essential for stakeholders to be able to utilise communication to enhance their abilities to manage a crisis situation. These strategic goals include: two-way communication, one-way communication/alerts, information sharing, and situational awareness. Our findings show that each of these goals should not be treated in isolation, but rather, should be considered in relation to one another as, under some circumstances, they are dependent on each other for enhancing crisis management. For instance, during a flood, in order for the public to assist responders in gaining situational awareness, information sharing (e.g., photographs or video content), two-way communication (e.g., being able to verify information, or request further information) are essential to building situational awareness which in turn can contribute to decision making to help coordinate response efforts.

The second part treats interoperability of services and data among different social media platforms. The findings show that today we face a situation of “walled gardens” created and maintained by large platforms wanting to control information and to contain it among their members. However, although interoperability in the technical and the semantic sense has not been achieved, partial solutions via the platforms’ APIs have allowed some degree of internetwork communication and information retrieval, including users-related data. This has enabled the creation of a widely available number of network aggregator applications, which also has the beneficial effect of centralising social network information during a crisis.

The third part of the report shows scenarios on how new technologies can potentially meet these inter-connected strategic goals for each of these stakeholder groups across the different phases of a crisis. Scenarios for emergency response have to be based on field experience and information available to rescue organisations taking part in the course of a crisis incident. To this end, we examined the basic aspects of such scenarios from three points of view:

• The organisation’s mode of operation in specific events via their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• The application of those to real-life situations as experienced by the COSMIC partner the Hellenic Rescue Team
• The contribution of weak signals and foresight to scenario building

In the first two areas, our findings show that the presence of social media appears particularly important. In the third area, we noted that there could be benefits for crisis management regarding the existence of a methodological framework addressing the incorporation of weak signals in distress scenario building and in the early recognition of an incoming crisis.

The additional evidence supplied by Standard Operating Procedures of stakeholder responder organisations and the real-life situations confirm that social media:

• Provide help towards responders by completing the building of situational awareness
• Are able to supply additional information, in particular at the first stages of a catastrophic incident, which can be decisive in attracting external funds and sponsoring and therefore enabling the participation of voluntary organisations (NGOs) such as the HRT
• Can provide valuable information able to direct rescuers of survivors
• Are a means of publishing information towards the public concerning rescue efforts and other vital to life information