DESASTRES

DESASTRES

12/15/2013

Alert4All, a step towards a pan European effective alert communications' system



Europe is a reality made of 27 countries and a common emergency number (112), where you can communicate any emergency situation everywhere within the European territory, despite the fact that 23 different official languages are spoken. Each country has its own emergency system and, up to day, there isn’t an harmonised approach to alert the population in Europe.

“The Alert4All goal is to improve the effectiveness of public alert and communication during crisis situations in European member States. This implies that Alert4All intends to reduce the impact of disasters (in terms of losses to health and life, as well as economic impact), by informing efficiently and on time the population at risk”, explains Cristina Párraga, Alert4All project manager.

“On the one side, this means that Alert4All is directed to the civil protection officials that shall inform the population, but also, and more importantly, to the European citizens that shall benefit ultimately from improvements in public alert systems”, adds Párraga.

You can also watch an interview in Spnish with Cristina Párraga here.


Relevant improvements in public alert using different technologies

Alert4All “improves communication features, cooperation between authorities and situation awareness. On the communication features’ side, Alert4All allows disseminating alert messages over many communication technologies directly to the citizens own devices, such as digital and smart TV, mobile phone and navigation device, but also over in-building security systems, such as the LED screens in railway stations, voice evacuation systems in malls, or schools and mass notification systems, such as public screens.



 Messages are received in the recipients’ selected language

The recipients’ will received the alerting message in their own language and in text or speech and in a harmonised way, “so that the alert message would look the same way regardless from the official, civil protection office or country from which the alert message is issued. This shall improve the familiarity of citizens with the public alert system and their trust on and understanding of the message.”



Alert4all fosters cooperation among several protection agencies

 “Alert4All provides means for rapid and efficient information exchange when several civil protection agencies are involved in the same crisis situation, which in turn improves coordination and cooperation”, explains Párraga.

Based on Social Media to improve the decision making process

“Alert4All has developed a screening of new media tool that observes how the population understand the situation and, based on this knowledge, to improve the decision making process. The impact that the crisis situation has on the population is inferred from the information that people generates on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and collaborative web sites).”


Sentiment analysis to enhance situational awareness  

“The information is analyzed to extract that are presented to the civil protection officials as sentiment trends over time, namely how people feel about the crisis and the communicated alert messages. This implements and indirect feedback channel in public alert communications, which have been unidirectional up to now. “

Estimating the message’s impact

It is also possible estimating  “if alert messages have been transmitted to, understood and believed by the relevant people and not only to technical devices, taking into account not only technical aspects but also social behaviour of the individuals and crowds“ using an alert impact simulation tool.

“This alerting effect simulation is considered by the involved crisis managers to be very useful both in preparedness planning and for investment decisions about additional channels for public alert purposes.”


Welcome to this new platform, as an important step needed to unify the emergency system in Europe. Don’t you find it necessary?

11/14/2013

Santiago derailment’s train. Which code of ethics?


“Ethical codes are adopted by organizations to assist members in understanding the difference between 'right' and 'wrong' and in applying that understanding to their decisions. An ethical code generally implies documents at three levels: codes of business ethics, codes of conduct for employees, and codes of professional practice”, according to a definition found in Wikipedia, to which I basically agree. 

This post is about the resolution expressed by the Press Associations’ Federation of Spain (FAPE) related to the images uploaded to Twitter last July 24th  2013, when a passengers’ train derailed in Santiago de Compostela, causing a big catastrophe, as I explained here.

Today the Press Manager of Madrid 112, @LuisSerranoR published a post in his blog showing his total disbelief with the sentence that explains why there is no ethical issue regarding the picture of a little girl being rescued by a firefighter that day. In that picture it is perfectly visible the child’s face, with no respect to her basic right to intimacy, since she is a minor and a victim. Let me add, now a double victim.

As @LuisSerranoR says, we are used to see the pictures of all the celebrities’ children with a veil on their faces, so we don’t know how that child looks like. It sounds at least weird that an organism that should be an example of best practices for the journalist tells us that there is no problem here because the protagonist of the image is not the child but the firefighter.Besides, they add, her family didn’t complain. What a lucky circumstance! Can you imagine thousands of victims all around the world complaining because of that?

What is more, if she is not the protagonist, but the firefighter, Why don’t you remove her, or at least cover her face?

No comments on that.

The ethical committee also explains that the picture “reflects the reality”. So what? 

It also adds that “journalist's commitment to truth can not fail.” Really? To begin with, reality, as @LuisSerranoR says, is something not that clear and, even if it was, we can not skip children’s rights arguing that. As the above definition says, it is an obligation of an organism that represents the journalist be clear on  what is right and what is wrong.

Tweet asking not so share unappropriate victims' pictures

Tweet asking not so share unappropriate victims' pictures 
Luckily, most of us know. That’s why emergency managers, VOST members and teams, journalists and some other people did our best that day to avoid that sort of images being shared through social media.
         
The sentence also says that the picture is “essentially objective and truthful”. Again, What is objectivity? Even more. I don’t care. I have two children. If that child were my daughter I would feel terrible. Anyone would. Is that so difficult to understand for a commission that should take ethical issues into consideration? Psychologists have already  given their professional opinion on the topic.

The picture shows the impact of the catastrophe?

I have no words. Simply. Al least 79 people died and 178 were injured. Do we need a picture showing a girl to realize the impact of the tragedy?

“The presence of the victims brings solidarity and serenity ", reads the sentence. Again. We are talking of fundamental rights according to our 1978 Constitution (art 18): honor, privacy, image
.
The last straw. “Pain and distress is the result of the accident victims”. Thanks God. So we can go to bed with peace of mind. It is not the journalist' fault. Can anyone seriously affirm so? Come on… Of course! If the train had not derailed there would not have been any pain!

To our disgrace, we see almost daily these sorts of pictures both in traditional mass media as well as in social media. But, up to day, never ever has an organism supposed to care for the ethical journalism’ issues affirm that sharing thesesort of pictures is all right.


If they are right, I must be terribly wrong, and I won’t follow their advice. I’d rather be and independent professional with my own ethical code. What would you do?

11/13/2013

#RescuePH, Social Media to rescue in Philippines

Social Media are proving, one more time, to be an effective and on time channel to coordinate the rescue efforts when a disaster strikes. After typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, citizens are using the hashtag #RescuePH in Twitter, the RescuePH Facebook page, the Google finder person and also the crowdmap that allow people to send a text message to locate people who need help, among other resources.

RescuePH, started in 2012, encourages Filipino netizens to tweet out calls for help. Users can fill out a form on the project's site, which populates an interactive map of people in need. 



Since #RescuePH has been used massively, Twitter Philippines has requested not to use the hashtag unless you need help.




It is also possible to send a text message asking for help


To use the Google person finder




And to upload a picture to Twitter with the image of a missing person you are seeking.



How to cooperate

To cooperate with the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) to help the Digital Humantarian Network (DHN) tagging tweets in response to Typhoon Haiyan, is also a possibility, as Patrick Meier explains here, here, and here.


Philippine Red Cross has also facilitate means to donate sending a the text message using its twitter profile @Philredcross

So once more, social media is providing an effective channel to help in a disaster. Do you have any other examples to add?

10/21/2013

#Edcivemerg, a dream coming true

A year and a half ago, a group of professional related to the emergency field joined our efforts to ask for a wish long time wanted: teaching all the children in Spain First Aid, Civil Protection and contents related to Emergencies, within one or more compulsory subjects, so we can ensure that all children will be capable not only to protect themselves but also to act as first responders while they wait for the emergency services to arrive. Today, the Senate approved a Parliamentary bill in this sense, and we all hope that it will be a reality in schools as soon as possible.




It’s been a long way since February 1st, 2012 when a group of people joined our efforts in #Edcivemerg to make this dream a reality, spreading the word that our children today can save lives tomorrow, as I already explained here, and today it is a benchmark marking the starting point.

Edcivemerg members in front of the Senate

Besides expressing my happiness and emotion, I wish to say thank you, first of all to all my colleagues who have been working without dismay, but also to the media, the professionals who have given their support in social media, as well as the scientific and proffesional societies and the politicians who backed up the initiative all around the country. 


We had a dream, and today it has come true!

8/04/2013

Crisis communications in Santiago's derailment accident

More than a  week has gone since a passengers' train derailed in Santiago de Compostela (North Spain), causing at least 79 death people and more than 100 injured. Despite the fact that Galicia 112 Twitter account was not operating and @Xunta shared  its first message 50 minutes after the derailment, social media proved an effective way to inform about the incident and, what is more, VOST teams as well as local influencers  were capable of countering criticisms, helped spreading the right information and cooperated intensely to stop a bad habit in Twitter: uploading  pictures where injured or dead people are shown  with no respect to the victims’ intimacy. Citizens also used Twitter to ask for help to find their loved ones, sharing pictures with birthmarks, tattoos or some other physical description to facilitate the task and asking for a RT.

@VOSTSpain beware their followers not to rumors into consideration

Let’s try to analyze how authorities used social media here, what they did well and what improvements could have been possible.

First of all, it is a pity that the official account @112Galicia is still not working. The account is set in Twitter. It has 104 followers but, for the time being, it has not been used, despite the fact that there are very good and qualified journalists working in Galicia 112 capable of managing it. The local authorities may know why they lost this chance to inform citizens directly using an official and credible source.

@Xunta, almost an hour to inform

@Xunta, the official account of the local Government, did try their best to cope with the situation. Before going on, I’d like to point out that they are not specialist  in crisis communications. The information delivered was accurate and useful, but it was a bit too slow. The train derailment happened at 20.41 on Wednesday 24th. @Xunta wrote its first tweet at 22.24. 50 minutes late and only to say that they would offer official information soon.



It took then 20 more minutes to say blood was needed (22.44). In the meantime, people were sending messages about this issue and it was really a bit difficult to be certain whether it was best to go to hospital to donate blood or to stay home and leave the roads free for emergency services because messages saying one thing and the opposite were simultaneous.

The donating blood issue was to me, a fail, saved, partially, thanks to the National Police account @policia , who put a bit or order here.

          
      

Using hashtags to follow the conversation

@Xunta, the official account with more than 27.000 followers didn’t create a hashtag to follow neither they use any to facilitate following the conversation. If you wanted to know what they were saying in Twitter the best way was to add a column in Hootsuite or TweetDeck. The problem to me was simple: lack of expertise, besides the obvious fact that they were overwhelmed by the tragedy.





Despite the delay and the confusion, @Xunta provided useful information helped by VOST teams, like @VOSTGalicia, @VOSTSpain, many influencers using their personal profiles and @112cmadrid, the official account of 112 in Madrid. The later seemed to turned into the official 112 voice in the absence of @112Galicia and, probably, due to the insufficiente response's capacity of @Xunta.

Up to 3 different phone numbers to search information

The information phone numbers issue was as well a failure. I founded at least 3 different
(I’ve been told that there were up to 5).






Nonetheless, I  don’t like to finish this article without pointing out that @Xunta did their best and that, despite all possible improvements, they managed the situation quite well considering, as I already said, that it is not their duty to handle crisis communication.


I also want to remark that I am very proud of how voluntary services as well as ordinary citizens reacted to this tragedy, offering all the help they could, in the derailment's scenario, and using social media.

José Sieyro, President of Caldas Civil Protection having a rest
on the railway after working all night






7/15/2013

Is Europe a puzzle related to crisis communications?



Very recently Galicia (Spain) opened its Twitter account @incendios085, whose main objective is to encourage citizens to call the firefighters emergency number (085) in case they see fire in the woods, according to its Twitter profile, where they also use the hashtag  #SeVesLume085 (if you see fire call 085). Galicia decided to promote the old firefighters number (085), due to disappear, even though the emergency number is 112. The account  is not a fake,  but sure it is a fail.

Also the Canarias Government was the first autonomy in Spain to have their own app to monitor emergencies, capable of making the reserve 112 a reality attending calls in many European languages. Despite the fact that all ways to communicate an emergency are legitimate, the question Id like to address here is whether they represent an improvement or a drawback.

Lets try to clarify the scenario where we move. In Spain there are 17 Autonomies plus two independent cities (Ceuta and Melilla). Each of them has a 112 PSAP and, as I say, the emergency number here is the same for all Europe: 112. Besides Canarias, Catalonia also has its own emergency app, gencat, and Madrid (the capital city) is already working in one.

On the other hand, there are intuitions, like the European Emergecy Number Association, EENA, and projects funded by the European Commission,  like Alert4All,   which is  at the last mile of a public alert system proof-of-concept implementation and will conclude in October 15 with the demonstration of its most remarkable features in an operational context, working very hard to have a common protocol capable of communicating an emergency everywhere in Europe, not to mention the Community Mechanism for Civil Protection , whose main role is to facilitate co-operation in civil protection assistance interventions in the event of major emergencies which may require urgent response actions anywhere inside or outside the European Union.

If we have the tools and are capable of working so well when countries are put together in an international disaster, to me it is a bit difficult to understand why we dont unify apps, numbers and procedures. Sure Spain is not the only one to have this scenario but a sample.


If the objective is to make things simpler for the affected citizens, the stakeholders and the emergency services. Shouldn't we all go in the same direction? 

6/24/2013

Who fail in Calgary? Should we rethink crisis communications management?


It is really a pity, not to say it makes me feel a bit ashamed, seeing how Twitter failed to provide the expected coverage to @CalgaryPolice, an account who was wonderfully giving answers, support and feedback to thousands of citizens during Calgary floods. @CalgaryPolice managed the situation when Twitter locked their account (due to an overused, according to Twitter terms) by redirecting the traffic to Digital Communications Officer, Jeremy Shaw, @CstShaw, who took over tweeting from his personal Twitter account,  on behalf of the official police Twitter account.

@CalgaryPolice used its account as the citizens expected. Engaging in conversation, countering criticism, managing volunteers offers and giving answers to questions as well as pulling information using the hashtag  #yycflood. It is not this the essence of social media? Well done till here. I won’t bIame them. On the contrary. My congratulations.



I don’t know how many people they needed to engage in that endless conversation but sure it has been an effort well worth. If I were in the middle of a flood, fire or hurricane, I would really appreciate that the authorities answer me in case I use Twitter to ask for help or instructions.
As a citizen I don’t care whether it was Twitter or Twitter algorithm the one who fail, as Simon Fraser University communication professor Peter Chow-White says here. The only thing that matters is that the account was shut down in the middle of an emergency for hours.

If we all agree that Twitter has become a fundamental channel in crisis communications, as it was during Sandy Hurricane, to quote but one example, how can it be possible that Twitter made a Twitter jail in the middle of a crisis of that dimension? I know rules must be obeyed, that’s what they are for. Otherwise no one would be able to know what to expect.

Having this scenario two questions come to my mind:

Is it sensible to rely crisis communications on one single channel? So long as I have seen, Calgary Police did not use its Facebook page during the floods, a channel with a lot of traffic during Sandy Hurricane. Neither had I found videos uploaded to YouTube.


The other questions  I wonder is: Do we need a different way to engage with people during an emergency? A reliable and resilient software we can really trust no matter what?

Just thinking aloud.

5/26/2013

How to perform an emergency drill using Social Media



I used to say, when I cooperated with the National School of Civil Protection in the International Coordination Course, as a media expert, that I love emergency drills because whatever happens no one would be hurt. I am not sure anymore of this statement. Let’s make myself clear, I still love drills because, generally speaking, it is still true the former statement, but what may happen when we run a drill though social media and it is not clear the difference between fiction and reality?

To avoid this happening, I’d like to point out some general outlines based on a wonderful drill performed beautifully by the city of San Francisco, in the USA. As you all know, they practiced the response and recovery to a simulated magnitude 7.8 earthquake during the 2013 GoldenGuardian exercise last May 15th. They counted on Twitter accounts @SF_emergency, @EM4SF. The first of them has nearly 60,000 followers and is used for sending out both urgent and non-urgent messages.

They also utilized Facebook and blogs as well as the web page 72hours.org, where it is possible to learn how to face a quake though the quakequizsf and meet SFHeroes, an interesting way for young people to get involved using an amusing app.

San Francisco Heroes

Besides expressing my congratulations, I wish to explain what they did so well as an example of best practices.

Advise the media.

To me this point is crucial. Sometimes people tend to forget that the “old” media are not only the way many people get the news but, moreover, they are a key point because they infom the community and also reproduce what it is being delivered through social media. If they ignore that an exercise is going on it is possible that they believed, as the rest of citizens, that the messages shared in an official account are real, especially if authorities, first responders and relevant stakeholder don’t use any especial #hashtag for the event.



A different topic is whether it is preferable to use the official account, as San Francisco did so well, or to create a specific profile for the exercise. Personally, I like the second idea because if we create an account with the word “drill “or “exercise” in the profile people would know what is going on, as @LuisSerranoR, Madrid 112 PIOs prefers,  though it is also true that in this case people need to identify the acccount. Pros and cons to be evaluating depending on the circumstances, aim of the drill, etcetera. I use it myself when teaching social media and the idea is just getting the students familiar with social media.

Use all channels

As the Public Information Officer for the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management, Francis Zamora said “It’s great that we can push messages out to different people, but not everybody’s on social media and so we use [more traditional] tools to do that.”
Great! That’s the idea. Use all channels. Social media is one more tool in the toolbox. No need to insist on this.

Involve (and informe) all relevant stakeholders

Pretty obvious, but still, well done. If in a real emergency all relevant stakeholders participate it is a good idea to involve them to be prepared before it happens. So, the appropriate integration of all relevant stakeholders, the better.

Update social media

It is necessary to update information as it changes within the exercise but also not to forget the rest. If we didn’t create a different account there should be a way to ensure that information related to the exercise is classified as belonging to it, so citizens know that all the rest is real information. Any one reading the timeline should be able to get updated information and must have a certain idea of what is reality and what is not.
It is also quite useful to make a summary of the event and analyze what went wrong and right to improve the response of the emergency services.



Inform when the exercise is over

As simple as this. We say when the exercise begins and when it is over. Still the same. We know what we are up to and that is always good. The more certainties we have, the better.
Any more ideas?

4/16/2013

Twitter live Boston Marathon



One again, the first announcement of a crisis, the twin blast in Boston Marathon, which left 3 dead people, including an 8 year old child, and more than a 140 injured, was acknowledged via Twitter. Social Media were quick and efficient to let us know in due time what was going on and what the authorities, first responders and the Government (including President Obama) were doing to cope with the situation.

The explosions occurred at 18.50 GMT near the finish line of Boston Marathon, the most important competition of this sort. Videos  and pictures followed them live in Twitter and Facebook  , as well as summaries using different tools like storify and YouTube channels, also quite helpful to draw a picture of the situation, including President Obama's speech.

Obama explained that he didn’t know who committed the attack or why, but assured the nation that they would find them. 







Regarding the authorities, Boston used used their Twitter account, @Boston_Police, to provide, for instance, a phone number for those eager to share information about the attack





The Boston Police also used its account to explain that all the agents had gone back to job, an important issue in any crisis, moreover if we remember that yesterday it was a holiday in Boston.




Clearly, if before social media appeared crises, disasters and even wars, were broadcast in television, today they go live on Twitter.


Social media are self-correcting

It is also true that Twitter spread rumors, as usually happens when a crisis occurs, but the network was also capable of countering criticism, so, once more, it’s been proven that social media do not need to be corrected form the outside, they are selfcorrecting. 

As an example we have this information uploaded to Twitter by The New York Post (@nypost) which affirms that 12 people were killed, when at that time there were only 2 people dead.



But it was quickly disproved by @Boston_Police.






It is also remarkable how the citizens not only of Boston but even of Canada offered help to those in need though the hashtag #bostonhelp, not to forget the quick opening of the  Google’sperson finder and those who unlock their Wifi networks to enable people in the streets to freely access the Internet.