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Published online 21 January 2009 | Nature 457, 376-378 (2009) | doi:10.1038/457376a
News Feature
Social networking: Crisis communication
Messages appear on Internet-based social networks within minutes of disasters occurring. Lea Winerman investigates how to harness this trend to create official community-response grids.
The messages began to fly almost as soon as the bullets stopped. Starting at 7:00 on the morning of 16 April 2007, an undergraduate named Seung-Hui Cho had carried a pair of semi-automatic pistols through the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg — better known as Virginia Tech — gunning down dozens of students and professors as he went.
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This is a very intersting article indeed. I would like to provide a complementary information on an actual and operational application to aggregate information from the public for response and more specifically for earthquake response. The Euro-Med Seismological Centre (EMSC) uses the surges of hits rate on its web site (www.emsc-csem.org) to map the area where an earthquake was felt within minutes of its occurrence (typically 8 minutes or less). Surges of hits rate are automatically detected, the IP are located and localities where the earthquake was felt are characterised by increased hit rate. On the contrary,damaged areas are identified by mapping localities with significant lack or absence of visitors. This original method was published in EOS, in June 17 2008 and proves to be efficient. Furthermore, the EMSC invites the witnesses to share their pictures of the earthquake damage through tool ensuring automatic georeferencing. This works and surprisingly it also allows to collected rare pictures taken during the shaking itself, like rock falling from a cliff or a dust cloud above a mountain during the M7.7 Chilean earthquake in November 2007 In addition to the more traditionnal online questionnaires (which provide more detailed information, but takes longer time), these tools are very efficient to rapidly constrain the earthquake impact. The key point is that this can only work if the web site is identified by the witnesses as providing needed information for the crisis. This is the case for EMSC which publish rapid earthquake location and information.
Interesting...I wonder if anyone has looked into false or inaccurate informatin that went out, any resulting problems...someone steered toward a fire instead of away, someone sent down a blocked road...and what liability implications are...they may go unnoticed via individual posts, etc., but imperfect information by a public entity would seem likely to result in lawsuits, innaccurate info about a death, in "pain and suffering suits", someone disgruntled employee/fun-loving teen who does not take it seriously...curious as to extent that happens and related liability/legal issues. Seems like reseasrchers would need to document that as well.