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management, technological development, training, and public involvement are on
the verge of revolutionary change due to the inclusion of social media and other
Web 2.0 concepts.
Specifically, there are three fundamental rules of social media application
in emergency management: (1) conversations are key, (2) no more middleman,
and (3) it has got to be free. These rules allow a leveling of the proverbial play-
ing field between emergency management programs of all sizes and at all levels of
government.
Perhaps the most significant change relates to the cost management of activities
related to emergency management projects. Social media and Web 2.0 concepts
are often eliminating the need for costly development of systems to manage emer-
gency management concepts such as planning, exercise management, and response
mechanisms. This cost saving is possible because of the establishment of robust net-
works, servers, and infrastructure by nearly all social media outlets (e.g., Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr) that allows for a high level of confidence when used
by emergency management or other secondary sources.
A second reason these systems are beginning to replace traditional mechanisms
is the implementation of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing allows tasks typically per-
formed by employee to now be performed by a collection of individuals within
a crowd who have no particular connection outside of the ability to perform the
desired function. Within emergency management, crowdsourcing has been used
numerous times, but most recently was utilized by BP during the oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico to collect suggestions about possible ways to stop the spill. BP
received more than 20,000 suggestions that were categorized into not possible,
already planned, or feasible. As a result, they identified nearly 100 options that
were feasible to stop one of the largest oil spills ever. 14 hese response concepts and
ideas were made accessible to decision makers and emergency responders in a more
timely manner and ultimately may have contributed to the resolution of the inci-
dent in a more quick and efficient manner.
Additionally, a free crowdsourcing website called Ushahidi has been utilized
during several international emergencies including the Haiti and Chile earthquakes
in early 2010. Ushahidi provided Web-based or mobile connectivity to collect (from
“the crowd”) information about the incident. This included Web-based maps that
provided real-time crowd-generated information about health conditions, infra-
structure damages, and localized emergencies. 15 The speed and accuracy of this
type of information aggregation is impossible by governmental or first responder
agencies utilizing current systems. The application of Ushahidi in these situations
is strong support that the public's growing expectation of speed and breath of infor-
mation is much faster than official government communication channels are cur-
rently able to provide.
Not only can emergency managers utilize public gathering and collection of
information, they can also self-define preparedness and response messages as well
as certain operational processes. Specifically, traditional media outlets (television,
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