In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

Geoff Livingston in Mashable has assembled a list of “4 Social Media Efforts To Aid The Gulf Coast.” He writes:
The far-reaching Gulf oil spill tragedy has left many people feeling powerless to help out. But beyond the official Deep Horizon response, pockets of non-profits and people are starting to use social media tools to organize [...]

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Andy Carvin, a senior strategist at NPR’s social media desk, just tweeted an announcement that the volunteer group CrisisCommons has released the Oil Reporter app to help citizens report on the Gulf Coast Oil Spill:
With tar balls and oil sheens beginning to reach the Gulf Coast, government officials and wildlife groups are anxious to document [...]

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For anyone interested in the role of technology in public disaster preparedness and response (and everyone in the field should be!), I highly recommend a new paper, “A Vision for Technology-Mediated Support for Public Participation & Assistance in Mass Emergencies & Disasters”.
It is co-authored by the University of Colorado/Boulder’s Leysia Palen (head of the school’s Crisis Informatics program which [...]

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There’s a useful roundup by Mollie Vandor, How To Prepare For Disasters Using Social Media, from the website Mashable.com. It was originally posted in March when this blog was on hiatus, and I just saw it. I wanted to post the article even though some of you may have already read it.
Vandor separates her guide into [...]

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Jeannette Sutton, who writes the informative Disaster Sociologist blog for the Emergency Management magazine website, has a post about last week’s Information Systems for Crisis and Response (ISCRAM) conference. She reports that the role of new media in emergencies received more attention this year:
In the past, social and information scientists seemed to be on the outer [...]

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On the Canadian Red Cross’s blog, Red Cross Talks, John Saunders, “Disaster Dude/Director of Disaster Management, Ontario,” has a post, Twittering About Emergency Preparedness. Saunders says that Twitter has helped the organization reach an audience — “Upward mobile, professionals between ages 30 – 45″ — which he says is often difficult to get to on [...]

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Nathan Hodge of Wired.com’s Danger Room blog has a good post, Preparing For The Next Haiti, With Maps, Texts, And Tweets, which discusses the impressive high-tech volunteer response to the earthquake. Hodge attended the Haiti Tech Meetup yesterday at the U.S. State Department yesterday and spoke to a number of those involved in the recovery [...]

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I just wanted to mention something quickly, which I thought was a nice – albeit small – touch. The Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness has a Twitter feed @GOHSEP which has been very active during the oil spill response. It has been distributing a lot of spill-related information for the public, [...]

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From the HerNashville.com website is an article, “Geeking out for a cause: Nashville flood response takes to the web,” which nicely describes how local residents have helped galvanize the city’s relief efforts using technology:
I’m just in awe of the way Nashville is responding in the face of this surreal, overwhelming crisis. And the way Nashville’s [...]

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It was clearly not the aim of the alleged Times Square bomber to spotlight the role of the citizen as part of the U.S.’s homeland security effort in one of the nation’s most high profile — and lit — places. But he did. The T-shirt vendors who tipped off a New York City Police Department (NYPD) [...]

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