Social Media & Emergency Response Russ Johnson

Social Media, Crowd Sourcing & Emergency Response How does GIS affect and Improve our ability to manage Social Media and Crowd Sourced Information ? What are some of the lessons learned? Where are we today?

Emergency Response What are the Essential information Requirements? What’s is Happening ? Where is it Happening? What are the Impacts ? How did it Happen How does Social Media help? What are the Challenges?

What is Happening? The world is watching and wants to help Rumors will run rampant and be live-tweeted during crisis events Images and videos, no matter how graphic, will surface The amount of information available will become stifling

What is Happening? There will be volumes of social media concerning what is happening The accuracy of this information will be hard to determine

Gulf Oil Spill

Where is it Happening? GIS can begin to focus the information Filter the incoming information by Geography What is being said by those near the event? Cut down the volume!

What are the Impacts? How do we determine the initial impact? What could the “downstream” effects be? What do we need learn more about?

Lessons Learned - Boston Marathon Understanding how it happened Thousands of photos, tweets, etc. Organizing the information and making sense of it

Summary How does GIS help us deal with Social Media? GIS can help us understand and filter Social Media by Geography – Where When integrated with other GIS data, helps us understand Potential Impacts - Potential Impacts GIS helps us Understand how it happened When, Where, and Who

Are we prepared to utilize Social Media? - Do you the ability to intake, organize, and assess the data? (Big Data) - Do you have the ability to Map it (location is available) - Do you have the ability to Share it with the appropriate personnel? - We still have work to do to utilize Social Media and Crowd Sourced Data in time sensitive situations Summary

Thank You