D.3.11. First report on the use of emerging technologies in crisis situations

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This is the first version of Deliverable D3.1 of the COSMIC project, released as D3.1.1. It provides preliminary results in the analysis of emerging communication technologies in support of Crisis Management.

New communication technologies and social media have greatly expanded the overall scope of communication in crisis management, because of several new synergetic factors, including: access to communication technology, richer communication modalities, communication occurring in public, and data exhaust. Therefore, the scope of emerging communication technologies, and social media and applications, encompasses intentional acts of communication, and unintentional acts of communication; and handling information as its recipient, and accessing and analysing public information as a third party. We provide a list of 27 specific emerging Technology Areas and Application Areas that are relevant according to this scope. These include: citizen journalism, cloud, crowdsourcing, data mining and big data, decision support, open data, and “organic” or smartphone sensor networks (these examples are discussed in detail in the current version of the document; all identified technologies will be elaborated on in the final version, i.e., in D3.1.2).

The new and emerging technologies, which offer significant tools for the improvement of crisis management, also entail a variety of risks, including risks to individuals’ privacy and sense of identity, and to the correct allocation of responsibility in crisis management, and risks due to the possibility of information overload, risks of potentially creating conflicts of interest in crisis management providers, and risks due to the possibility of causing unintended, negative consequences when employed for the purpose of crisis management.

Social Media are transforming many aspects of crisis management. For example, social media can be used for making diagnoses of vulnerabilities in systems and infrastructures (in preparation for crises), they can be used to facilitate and simplify search and rescue actions (during a crisis), and they enhance control and community connectedness (including when recovering from a crisis). In addition to their use by individuals, Social Media are being exploited in large crisis management projects, including ‘NASA style mission control centres’, for monitoring and responding to Social Media, being deployed by large organisations. Social Media contribute to the openness, fairness and quickness of communication during a crisis.