Big Ideas for Facebook Disaster Relief

 

 

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Big Ideas for Facebook Disaster Relief

vía CrisisCommons de Heather Blanchard el 9/06/11

Hi everybody!

Just back from a great visit with our CrisisCamp friends in Europe and the first Missing Persons Data Summit with some super smart policy and technical folks. We hope to have some great "Road Journal" updates about our adventures and the great work of so many people who made it all possible. Be looking out for a few updates this weekend!

As soon as I returned we immediately dove into participating in Facebook's first Disaster Response Workgroup meeting that was held on Tuesday, June 7th at Facebook's new offices on F Street here in Washington DC. It was pretty cool to be connected via teleconference to folks also participating at Facebook's headquarter in Palo Alto.

The conversation was very lively all day from across most of the organizations who were participating, including some of our friends from the American Red Cross, FEMA, Ushahidi and California Emergency Management Agency. We all welcomed CNN in the room in the afternoon discussion and wrote a story today, "Facebook assembles group to plan for disasters."

As we like to do at CrisisCommons when we attend meetings we wanted to share what was happening. I tried to take notes the best that I could to capture the discussion within the group. There were many interesting discussions such as the use of verified accounts, the "organic" content vs. "official" content and the ability of response agencies to even reach Facebook (its blocked at many government agencies). There was also a great discussion about Facebook's own internal continuity measures with connecting to their own employees.

Throughout the day, Facebook often asked the group, "How can we help?" During the meeting I wrote up a list which I've expanded on a bit to share what might be helpful, or could be done. Lots of B-I-G ideas. You can always ask, right?

So here goes, some of my personal thoughts on what Facebook can do to help:

• Explore the challenges of the Facebook algorithm which provides only a selected amount of content to the user. Often that content is based if there had be interest before. Facebook could explore how official crisis information could be seen 100%, not 20% of the time (based on the current Facebook algorithm) in Top News, even if the consumer has never visit the Page. How can there be options of text notification via mobile app during crisis events? What would this look like? For example, if I "like" San Francisco Emergency Management and they create a geolocated alert for my area because I'm in a Tsunami zone, how can Facebook make sure that I see that information, even if I don't normally visit that Page? How does that rise above everything else, especially if I don't pay attention to it all the time? How can a consumer create those settings in advance? Or even a search setting, if people are talking about "earthquake" in my location, how can I get a notification that is going on without looking into the mobile app?
• Facebook could invest in a team dedicated on continuous improvement and engagement for humanitarian relief with both a domestic (to the country of presence) and international humanitarian relief. Ideally Facebook could a dedicated primary point of contact for this team.  The team could be coordinated as part of a corporate citizenship effort (not platform development) and participate in preparedness planning, exercises, trainings and events before crisis events. This team could recruit and manage a team of Facebook volunteers who could provide subject matter expertise, participate in hackathons with technology volunteers and support digital preparedness, response and recovery efforts.
• Facebook could create an Facebook Digital Think Tank where researchers, technology volunteers and Facebook analysts could collaborate to utilize open data to contribute new understanding how people and organizations are using Facebook as a platform to inform how emergency management and humanitarian relief practitioners do their job. Facebook's Digital Think Tank could be multi-disciplinary (Technical, Policy, Consumer Behavior, ect)  and should include technology volunteers as well as academia. There could be an open source tool development with technology volunteers. Facebook and agencies could have a exchange , embed or loaned executive program where Facebook and an agency could swap employees to provide better understanding and and subject matter expertise on both sides.
• Facebook could create a Facebook Crisis Landing Page, similar to Google (http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html), to direct people to official information. Facebook could ensure that local crisis information "comes to the top of any search" using search and pro-bono ad placement. In addition, crisis information results could be part of the consumer experience such as providing donated ad space directing consumers to official crisis information (or to the landing page) or by adding a "Recommendation box" in the upper right hand corner in geographic areas where a crisis has happened or as part of a ticker which launches the box when people search for crisis information. I even think it could be a super great idea to allow people to create their own crisis information links (and showcasing the official information as options for them to share).
• Facebook could join the Missing Persons Community of Interest, like Google, in coordinating with response and relief agencies on missing persons data (both domestic and international). This is an open community with participants such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and Refugees United.
• Facebook could be a significant partner in the 2011 National Preparedness Month effort to help their community understand how to use their platform, especially in case of an emergency. For example, Facebook could go through the Ready Rating program offered by the American Red Cross to make sure their employees and their families are prepared in case of a disaster.
• Facebook could encourage families to be better prepared in their digital world by encouraging families to create Family groups or a Family Preparedness Facebook App which could be a game (ie. Farmville) to help families become better connected and better prepared in case they are disconnected from their digital devices. (Example – local rally location, memorization of key phone numbers)
• Facebook could create a "verified" Page so that people can see that Page is part of official information. It is very confusing to citizens in the middle of a crisis when Pages are sprouting up which look official but aren't.
• Facebook could create a sub-administrator function so that technology volunteers can help response agencies and nonprofits to manage comments/content. For example, people put their phone numbers on Page posts.
• Facebook could create some kind of crisis information expiration notification to point the user back to current official information. Challenge is that people recycle old information. Someone says they need water and two weeks later people are giving them water. This is significant for not only action information like – evacuation notifications but of donation management. In Alabama there was significant duplication of efforts based on needs provided through social media. For example, we heard that 30 groups (some affiliated with the response, some faith-based an unaffiliated) took action and there was duplication. We are seeing this more and more.
• Facebook could incorporate perspectives and use cases from the humanitarian relief ecosystem including emergency management and disaster relief practitioners in the initial concepting of platform developments not at the end.
• Facebook could support education and training opportunities of emergency management practitioners across the word on how to use their platform.
• Facebook could launch a significant consumer awareness campaign (in collaboration with privacy and emergency management practitioners) to show people how to use their platform to share that they are okay. For example, you need to turn on your geolocation, text to Facebook status feature.
• Facebook could add features to its platform and encourage behavior of third party applications
  • Facebook Mobile App could have the ability to share posts or tag posts, videos or photographs of pages (only on the browser version).
  • Facebook Mobile App could have the ability "share with everyone" option so if someone is in a crisis and they want to share the picture with the world it can be tagged, shared and geolocated.
  • Facebook could have the ability to provide a Pages feature where unaffiliated groups can aggregate their pages together. For example, during a crisis you can have the Red Cross, local emergency management and other "affiliated pages" so citizens can work through the response information.
• Facebook could  lead by example, provide a leadership role and expand their "digital celebrity" to support crisis events. For example, Facebook could use the World Economic Forum and other global engagement opportunities to explore how the technology sector who has made great effort to have consumers adopt technology tools to commit to consumer education to teach how to use Facebook in a crisis. This could also be done in collaboration with Internet providers, especially mobile carriers where connectivity, capacity and capability in crisis events can be a significant challenge.
• Facebook could participate in existing crisis response, cybersecurity and other governmental workgroups which focus on providing the technology sector with information on potential challenges in cybersecurity as well as crisis response.

In thinking about what could others do…

• Chief Information Officers (especially government at all levels) should remove "cybersecurity" blocks from social media tools from both their desktops and their mobile phones.
• FEMA could  (1) establish a Technology Subcommittee under the National Advisory Council which can allow for companies like Facebook to engage with the agency, (2) create an office which could laision directly with companies like Facebook to incorporate the latest technology innovations and adoption use as well as coordinate response and recovery roles with the technology sector (3) revise national emergency management doctrine to reflect the massive adoption of technology by citizens and organizations and provide guidance and training for emergency management practitioners (4) create a technology embed program to show technology companies how crisis response is done and to exchange how the response authorities use (or don't use) these tools and platforms (5) request that technology use be captured by FEMA and its affiliated response agencies and organizations (internal and external) and (6) dedicate resources to increasing digital literacy of emergency management and its affiliated response communities (including Faith-Based, VOADs, and others)
• Emergency management, telecommunications and technology trade associations could create committees to focus on the use of technology by their members and/or customers. These committees could work together to help drive consumer education and understanding and use of technology tools in crisis events at not only a policy and technical level, but also across their C-level leadership

Also during the meeting Facebook asked, "What needs to happen before a crisis?" Here are a few quick ideas:

• What citizens could  do:
  • learn how to turn your geolocation on (if you want to be found) and know your privacy settings (and how to change them)
  • learn how to update your personal status to say "I'm okay" via a text message
  • "like" crisis information pages before a crisis (local emergency management, fire, ect)
  • create a family and neighborhood group, like local response agencies
• Facebook could:
  • have a known crisis information landing page for events
  • laision to crisis organizations (ie. know where and who to get information from)
  • coordinate a Facebook Crisis Response Volunteer Team to provide assistance to response agencies or affiliated organizations who need help with the Facebook platform
  • provide exclusive beta test opportunities to "dogfood" or pilot  features with emergency management and technology volunteer communities, provide opportunities test a Facebook landing page, mobile apps, ect.
  • create a focus on digital preparedness – work with Zynga and other Facebook gaming app companies to encourage the gamification of digital family communications plans and other preparedness and mitigation efforts. develop cause marketing opportunities with their media partners – tie into vendors; retail, transmedia experience
  • use crisis events as teachable moments to help Facebook consumers know how to use the platform if they were in a crisis
  • could help people learn how to use Facebook before crisis events
  • could help emergency managers understand how to use Facebook to communicate with the public and for the public to share what they see as part of their situational awareness
  • involve emergency management in the development of future features of Facebook in the development stage rather than as an after thought vertical, they should be part of the enhancement opportunity of the utility of the product and how people can share when they are (or their friends/family) in a crisis situation
  • provide access to Facebook open data (firehouse of what people have shared with "everybody" designation) to the research community, especially when there are disasters (real-time research). we need to learn and continuously improve how emergency management uses these tools and to understand the rapid adoption behavior of people using the tools.
• Technology volunteer developers
  • teach how to use Facebook API (and how it works with other systems, data feeds), provide developer expertise and leadership
  • teach how to pull data for agencies, nonprofits
• Agencies could work – before the event – to:
  • establish a Facebook Page (and potentially groups)
  • training on how to use the Page, develop a unique voice
  • figure out a multi-agency approach/potential landing page (official information)
  • community engagement, promote citizens to "like" the page before a crisis if Facebook is their preferred challenge
  • Ensure updates if located outside of the emergency operations center
  • Set expectations of support and engagement before, during and after a crisis

We want to give a big thanks to Facebook for inviting us to participate! Often, technology volunteers aren't part of the conversation and we are very happy to be able to share our perspectives and really look forward to working with Facebook in the future.

Here's to big ideas!

Heather Blanchard (@poplifegirl)
Co Founder
CrisisCommons

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