Blog 6 Week 8 - Witness to a Crisis
(CraigFEMAtweet 2012)
Social Media platforms have been utilised for a while now to collect information and visual Medias to provide real time help and guidance in a disaster situation. “Posted pictures and videos can drastically improve the situational awareness of emergency service responders and coordinators before they arrive onsite, which again leads to better-informed decisions and preparations” (Berselli 2012 p.36)
In disasters, many communication tools are lost or have limitations, but as people, even in developing countries still have access to phones to share photos and texts This is called crowdsourcing.
Haiti’s earthquake disaster is an example of how crowdsourcing have facilitated help in a crisis. In the early stages of Ushahidi’s development, the 4636 text service collected and disseminated information to provide information relief. (Mullins 2010).
(Crisis Map Haiti 2012)
Platforms allow people across the globe to offer and action help. From raising relief funds, bringing attention to services that were needed or to digital citizens translating texts into English, bridging the gap between aid workers and residents, this is a invaluable service the digital community as a whole provided.
Documented benefits of residents texting for help in a crisis;
* A Haiti clinic received help for their generator within 20 minutes of texting
* Thousands of volunteers improved the map of Haiti to enable a more comprehensive social map
* These maps were then handed out in the field to pinpoint areas that needed help
* http://crisiscommons.org/ matches volunteers with appropriate skills to the needy residents.
* World Bank has been able to use this map to assess the cost of rebuilding
(Mullins 2010)
(Connecting people, tools & resources to support crisis response 2014)
The huge volume of information can in itself be self verifying. This can create a pattern of activity that will override inaccurate information (Berselli 2012 p.35)
Unless data is validated then the information cannot be relied upon. Patrick Meier (2012), who created the intial crowdmap for the Haiti disaster found that validating the huge volume of texts and tweets was a big task. He and the “digital humanitarians” at The Fletcher School sifted through to find the most relevant and urgent information. Meier (2012) sees a huge potential for future humanitarian response as shown by the Haiti disaster.
References
Berselli, S 2012, ‘Crisis Mapping Community Social Media Information During and After Large-Scale Disasters in Victoria’ Diss, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
‘CraigFEMAtweet’ [image], in National Geographic 2012, viewed 20 January 2015, <http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2012/06/CraigFEMAtweet-600x407.png>.
‘CrisisMapHaiti’ [image], in National Geographic 2012, viewed 20 January 2015, <http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/files/2012/06/CrisisMapHaiti1.png>
‘Connecting people, tools & resources to support crisis response’, [image], in CrisisCommons 2014, viewed 20 January 2015, <http://crisiscommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/CC_transparentlogov2.png>
Ford, H 2012,’Week 8’, Crowd Wisdom, Index on Censorship, Learning materials on blackboard, Swinburne University of Technology, 12 January 2015, viewed 14 January 2015.
Meier, P 2012, ‘How Crisis Mapping Saved Lives in Haiti’, National Geographic, 2 July, viewed 19 January 2015, <http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2012/07/02/crisis-mapping-haiti/>.
Mullins, J 2010, ‘How crowd-sourcing has helped in Haiti’, New Scientist, Vol.205, no.2745, pp.8-9 , DOI:10.1016/S0262-4079(10)60206-0