VOST emergency drill reaches 268,735 in TATGranada15

A big industrial fire was the scenario where @LuisSerranoR, the dircom of Llorente y Cuenca, set up an emergency drill with the cooperation of @vostSPAIN, including president @Galvez Rivas, spokesperson (myself), @VOSTEuskadi Jokin Zubieta and @VOSTCanarias @JaviBlancoF presidents, as well as other team members and emergency communications specialists.

The drill started during Luis Serrano speech about crisis commons when he announced that a live exercise would be held using Twitter. It started when @GalvezRivas tweeted  that a big fire has just started in a  solvents factory and 15 fire crews plus 5 ambulances were in its way to the place, even though there was no one hurt.

After the first tweet, seven more Twitter fake profiles worked for about 20 minutes to show how emergency services, VOST team and mass media (a radio station under the name @OndaCerosimulac) deal with an emergency in the social network and do their best to inform the citizens and to stop rumor spreading through the web. 

I was in charge of the mass media profile, @OndaceroSimulac, working from my office in Madrid, while my colleagues where attending the event live in Granada (South of Spain). All of us worked coordinated following the Timeline using the hashtag #SimulacroTAT  and uploading information and pictures as we usually do when there is a real disaster here in Spain. 

We also were counting on two profiles spreading rumors (@Trollsimulacro - @josetes112- and @enteradillosimu - @ffdezalcaide). Besides, we also had a person who was asking for his father, @familiarsimul - @Ant_Varon- whom she has not seen and who finally died due to the incident. 

@112simulacro (112 is the official emeergency number in Europe)  and @industriasimul (@JaviBlancoF, from VOST Canarias) led the communications process from the beginning, updating emergency numbers, facts and figures related to the emergency. So did VOST, who also included a picture with the hazardous substances forming a toxic cloud. The mass media radio station retweed the official sources (@112simulacro and @vostsimul) and asked all the rest updated information

@Brigadistasimul (@gemaimorcillo)   and @enteradillosimu (@ffdezalcaide) played two controversial roles. The first being a fireman tweeting inconvenient pictures and confronting the emergency service and the second acting as a person who seeks notoriety trying to be a source of information.  

The troll @Trollsimulacro  (@josetes112) as expected, cursed all the time and everyone. Obviously, no one talked to him.

The drill’s impact

If we have a look to Tweet Binder, the drill had  268,735 Potential impacts, 130,358 Potential reach, 85 Contributors,  1,534 Followers per contributor and 2.45 Tweets per contributor.

The activity peak was as 1.05 pm on June 23rd.

It was my pleasure to participate in the exercise and I feel proud to be a member of VOST, since they play a fundamental role, when a disaster strikes. I also find it very important to practice using a simulated scenario, so we will be ready in case the black swan appears. 

Don’t you agree?

MIT Laboratory for Social Machines, a bet to avoid a mayor emergency in Twitter

The MIT Media Lab announced the creation of the Laboratory for Social Machines (LSM), whose main goal would be the creation of programs aimed to develop collaborative technologies to tackle complex social problems, as you can read here. This would be great news for the emergency management world as long as Twitter itself developes new technologies  capable of detecting a big streaming growing up in Twitter. Once we have this problem solve, it would turn into the best tool for PIOs to control rumors when a disaster strikes. If we admit that Twitter is the biggest web of reporters existing ever (with all their drawbacks) and that it offers a synchronized experience, as @dkroy explained in #TATGranada2014, there is an urgent need to put an order in this huge stream of information. We’ll try to explain in this post (co written with @LuisSerranoR) why and how this new tool may help.

It is true that there are some ways to monitor conversation in social media (we are talking about Twitter basically here) when a disaster strikes. We can add a column either in Hoosuite or Tweecked with a Hashtag (ie: #Sandy, #yycflood) and this helps to monitor the conversation. I always tell my students that a tweet without a Hashtag is like going to a Big Store without a directory indicating you where the goods are. If you want to buy shoes you go to the shoe section- not to the bakery. So if you want to follow the news of a Hurricane your follow the HT with its name.

We could also follow the official source of information (usually the Government, local authority, and so on) or a list of influencers and people we trust as a reliable source of information, but still, we cannot stop rumors because we lack relevant information: where and when (the exact time) the tweet was posted being the more important. Moreover, we need to detect the rumor going viral from the very beginning.

Time is relevant to stop rumors going viral

The thing is we don’t have any app capable of detecting a huge stream of (false- not trusted) information expanding at an incredible speed. By the time we detect a rumor in social media, it would have been retweed thousands of times; it would have become viral and would have caused undesirable effects. We would be lucky if we can still control the situation if a big disaster strikes, considering the speed of Twitter. Just remember the 6.000 tweet per second in the aftermath of Japan’s earthquake .That's why Twitter would the one to offer the Technological solution.

Using a HT helps, but it is no enough to stop rumors

What I describe above is a way to follow only the information of a topic and spare the rest. But, as explained, besides detecting the rumor stream there are some other issues to solve: where and when a tweet was posted (most tweets are not geolocated); whether the information delivered is updated, relevant, and trustful and who is the source of information (when this is not indicated). Our main problem remains. We need a lot of hands (VOST teams) to stop rumor spreading through social media.

As @LuisSerranoL says, one day we will face a mayor disaster amd rumors will be so big that we will not be capable of controlling them. Unless we find a way to really scrutinize social media and get the information delivered in a manner we can decide what is worth and what is rubbish at the speed needed to stop a mayor disaster. 

500 million tweets per day and 241 million users deserve a solution to the Twitter conundrum, especially when we are talking of saving their lives, properties and the enviorenment. It is on Twitter's hands to provide a tool that helps emergency managers making civil protection to save  lives using social media.

If Twitter succeeds in creating this rumor detector, the microblogging site would move from being just a mass media to effectively save lives in emergencies. This step would be the base above which  Public Administration and VOST teams all over the world would build a holistic strategy to stop rumors.

As @dkroy heard  at #TATGranada14 from @LuisSerranoR speech: “100 firefighters cannot stop a tsunami without the help of they who control the web”. The Laboratory for Social Machines is undoubtedly a huge step to fulfill this goal.

Can we avoid Tweets expiring in emergencies?

Yesterday night I was reading @LuisSerranoR post explaining why and how tweets expire in emergencies and whether it would be possible to find a solution. I completely agree with him in his approach. Nonetheless, I’d like to add one more step in the possible solution. That is: if only Twitter can make it possible to counter criticism efficiently, let’s ask them to make an app to solve the problem.

As @LuisSerranoR explains so well, we have a problem (in emergencies) when people collapse the timeline with old information regarding, for instance, the need for blood donation. If that happens, roads might be collapsed and hospital overwhelmed, so they won’t be capable of attending injured patients who really need their help.

Detecting rumors in Twitter

The first step to detecting that something is going on (whether they are good/bad news or rumors) is a peak in the number of messages coming for a source or being retweeted. Let’s offer an example. I realized that King Juan Carlos of Spain resigned the throne because my iPhone screen informed me that several of my contacts had retweeted @CasaReal. So I had a look and discovered the big scoop going on.  Since the source was official and verified, the information was correct.

What happens when we follow non official accounts and make RT without checking the time when the info was pushed?

As I already said, old information spreads, with the consequences already known.

Why do we spread that info without checking? There are many reasons. Being lack of expertise the first and most obvious of all, good will is another. We want to be helpful, so if we read in Twitter that blood donation is needed most people would retweet straight away, without thinking whether blood was needed some hours ago, but it is not anymore, as @LuisSerranoR says.

The added problem is that people are not as fast as they were before when it is time to retweet that blood is no needed any more. That’s because the previous action make us feel better people, while the second does not seem to be as important issue as the previous one.

The same would apply to pictures. We only have to see what happens with false pictures during Sandy Hurricane.

VOST teams are not enough

Neither VOST teams nor influencers are capable, by themselves, to stop this tsunami of information; no matter how hard we work or how many we are (we are quite a few here in Spain).

If we agree that the emergency should be twitted,  only Twitter, detecting in due time the peak of information, would be capable of stopping this process by making a tool (an app?) which analyzes this phenomenon and acts as a content curator.

Let’s hope it will be develop before a really huge catastrophe strikes.

Any thoughts?

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.