Close

Close
Special Announcement
Newsletter Sign Up
Calendar
Back March '10 Forward
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11 12 13 14
15 16 17 18 19 20 21
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
29 30 31        
Syndicate This Blog
Top Referers
www.gotgeoint.com (117)
manomano.livejournal.com (76)
www.thegisforum.com (68)
myteams.dot.ga.gov (54)
planetgs.com (54)
Our Points
Friday, February 16. 2007

Social Networking for Emergency Response

An article in Science by Declan Butler, covered by the Discovey Channel highlights the potential use of social networking on the Web as a tool of emergency response. The idea is to take advantage of existing groups and their trust relationships to help report information in time of crisis and to perhaps tap individuals to help others in their geography.

The idea is from Ben Shneiderman, professor and founding director of the HumanComputer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park and Jennifer Preece, professor and dean of the university's College of Information Studies. Paying for such a system is challenge, of course. The important thing here, I think, is that we are moving beyond the technology part of response to figure out the people part. Using existing social groups is certainly a start.

I mentioned Schneiderman in another people related context after I heard him speak at Brookings.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 08:59 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) | Bookmark and Share

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Question here is how can we trust the information that gets transmitted across the social networks? Surely disinformation can be as easily sparked.
#1 Kamion on 2007-02-19 12:00 (Reply)
In the case of the one emergency management organization that I am very familiar with, they are very glad to have input from all sorts of sources. Anyone can alert them. But the EM organization is unlikely to publicly post the information, nor act on it, without some sort of verification by their own specialists, by trained personnel from some other agency, or by first-line responders.

Kamion's comment seems very realistic. Frequently the problem is filtering the mass of information we get.

The hypothetical case of the chlorine leak mentioned in the Discovery channel article may also be a bad example. It's not clear that the people who are most in danger will be reachable by the new form of social network any more than they are with the old ones (which the EM agency is parobably already familiar with). And the registry of social groups would be maintained at the local level -- meaning that in some areas there'll be someone paying attention, and in other areas...not.
#2 Charles Siegel (Link) on 2007-02-22 15:43 (Reply)

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA
    
  
 
Advertisers
Polls
What do you think of this blog's "tidbits" articles that provide roundups of stories on a theme?
Love them, read them all.
Always read the ones in my area(s) of interest.
I skip them.
Didn't realize you did that!

Archives
Comments
atanas entchev about Where is ESRI's Dangermond on Forbes Billionaire List this Year?
March 11
Same net worth, different cohort. Last [...]


David Dalka about Wanted: Keynote Speaker for Regional GIS Conference
March 11
I'd be willing to explore doing that, [...]


NEIEN geo-partner about #NSGICMidyear: USDA, DOI, EPA GIO Panel
March 11
Great to hear that Jerry is promoting [...]


PB about Navigation Sense May be Linked to Genes
March 10
There are a few contradictory symptoms [...]


Martin Isenburg about Wanted: Keynote Speaker for Regional GIS Conference
March 10
i will do lasers & chickens and use [...]


Julia Miller about Google Tidbits
March 10
Do you know why Google would restrict [...]


Don Cooke about Interactive Census Map Challenges Us to Do Better in 2010
March 10
At the Place level,the thematic display [...]


Amazon Recommendations