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.