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Northern Illinois U shooting: better, but authorities still don’t get it right
By WDavidStephenson | February 15, 2008
Just heard CNN’s legal expert say that no one could fault Northern Illinois University’s handling of emergency communications during and after the shooting yesterday.
I can: they did better than VA Tech authorities, but still not enough.
According to this story, cell phones were jammed, and students couldn’t call out or their parents call in — but they did piece the situation together quickly via a variety of Web sources.
IMHO, here’s what was missing:
- still isn’t clear whether the University sent text alerts, or just reverse 911 and emails. You gotta send text, both because it’s what students use the most, and because it uses less bandwidth and thus is more likely to get through
- you can’t count on an opt-in system: they need the SquareLoop system that will automatically text anyone who’s on the campus, regardless of whether they are normally there.
- they should have educated students in advance about smart cell use in emergencies, such as using social networking apps such as Twitter that are already popular with students so they could let their families know with a single “tweet” that they’re ok, rather than fruitless voice calls that:
- don’t get through
- crash the system.
- we saw a lot of student videos on CNN iReports, etc.: but did authorities instruct students in advance on:
- staying safe at all costs
- if you are on the scene, and are safe, what details should you try to provide to authorities
- how can you submit your camera- and video-phone pix on a real-time basis to authorities?
Remember Stephenson’s Law #3:
.. in a crisis, turn communications over to the 15-25 year olds — they know how to route around obstacles (including adults!), and are most familiar with exploiting the full capabilities of emerging communication technologies.
..students know more about smart communications than anyone does, so take your cues from them, rather than trying to impose some old-fashioned approaches on them.
Technorati tags: homeland security videophone crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds xml crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior networked homeland security Square Loop location-based services geo-spatial web
web 2.0 homeland security 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management CNN iReport CNN Twitter disaster planning disaster planning 2.0 Northern Illinois University
Topics: technology, empowering public, policy and politics, e-gov transformation, networked security | |
