Gustav: my emergency tips can save lives at Stephenson blogs on homeland security 2.0 et al.

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Gustav: my emergency tips can save lives

By WDavidStephenson | August 29, 2008

BTW: Since today is the 3rd anniversary of Katrina, and the Bush Administration totally dropped the ball not only during Katrina but also afterwards, I hope you’ll follow the Unitarian-Universalist Service Committee’s lead, take the Hurricane Katrina Third Anniversary Quiz to test how much you know about what happened (and hasn’t!) and, Ask your U.S. representative to cosponsor H.R. 4048, The Gulf Coast Civic Works Act. It would create 100,000 jobs — at prevailing wages — for Gulf Coast residents to rebuild their communities.

Looking ahead to the likely landfall of Gustav next week, I want to reinforce how critical it is to know now how to creatively use your personal communication devices and Web 2.0 apps in an emergency when conventional communications may be disrupted.So here, drawn from the VITA Advisory tips I created for the Wireless Foundation and my “21st-century disaster tips you WON’T hear from officials,” — and some new ones to boot! — are IMHO the key things you should learn now to be prepared if and when disaster strikes:

learn how to send text messages
IMHO, this is perhaps the most important tip, because it can tip the balance between constructive use of wireless devices or making a bad situation worse.
Text messages still got through in Manhattan on 9/11 and during Katrina: they are small, and because they are packet-based and can route around disruptions in the Internet, that they place far fewer demands on a compromised infrastructure.
As I wrote in the Wireless Foundation tips, this can be an opportunity to make your teens key players in your family communications strategy:

“It may be intimidating when you see your teens wildly pressing keys on their cell phones to send a text message (also know as SMS or Short Message Service). But knowing how to text could be critical in an emergency. Text messages can often get around network disruptions when a phone call might not be able to get through. The 160-character limit for an individual message makes you send concise ones, which are also easier to read in a crisis situation.So swallow your pride and let your teens show you how to text: it will make them feel good and may provide some family laughs! Or you can go to this tutorial.

“Once you’ve gotten the basics down, you may want to learn texting abbreviations, so you can pack more information into each message, (as well as helping you understanding those cryptic messages from your kids). Who knows: you may start texting on a regular basis!”
learn your camera phone’s features
Can it zoom? Can it take videos? How do you save a photo and give it a name? How can you attach a photo to an instant message?Practice using the controls so you can compose a photo and avoid blurs. Since this is one of the things that teens love to do, you might ask your kids to help you. Here’s a tip sheet on how to take good camera phone pictures.

Take a photo of each member of the family and attach it to his or her listing on your cell phone directory. In an emergency, you’ll be able to provide authorities with a picture of your child or other family member.

Learn how to post your photos to sites such as Twitter, and to add descriptions and tag them with a tag that is short and descriptive, so that they can provided situational awareness, as happened during the California wildfires.
learn TwitterLong-time readers may remember that I was originally pretty dismissive of Twitter back in the day, when it was used primarily for navel-gazing (”that was a great sandwich”). That was before more and more people began using it and learning how to compress critical, actionable info into 140-character “tweets.”In disasters such as the San Diego wildfires Twitter provided invaluable situational awareness (and, with the recent earthquakes in Virginia and California, there were “tweets” providing breaking information well before the wire services or official announcements came out!).
if it works with your videophone, learn Qik.
This is my latest tip, and it demonstrates how using your wireless devices creatively in an emergency requires constantly keeping on top of new developments in devices and apps: in this case, the growing number of cellphones that also let you shoot video, and Qik, the new app that allows you to post live, streaming video to the web! As I said in this tip, “tweets” can provide important information, and Flickr photos can add visual components, but as of now (and, believe me, that’s subject to sudden, dramatic change when some new device or app is introduced!) there’s nothing that can compare with live, streaming video from the scene of a disaster (check these from floods in St. Louis, Iowa, and Ireland).
when all else fails, get walkie-talkies!
I love this one, because it’s the ultimate in low-tech (barring, of course, two tin cans and a string…): if all conventional networks fail, you can still communicate if you and your neighbors all by cheap walkie-talkies, tune them to the same channel, and then pass messages. That’s what the grassroots District of Columbia Emergency Radio Network (DCERN) does: no government funding, no endorsements, just works!

There are other important tips in the series, such as getting your medical records on a secure thumbdrive so you can have them with you at all times, adding “ICE” listings to your cell directory, or downloading CUWiN mesh networking software so you have have a self-0rganizing, self-healing network if you don’t have web access. Please check them all out!

N.B. Equally important as us knowing how to use these devices and apps is for police and fire personnel to begin to automatically check Twitter, Qik and Flickr in disasters so that they can gain invaluable situational awareness from those who happened to be on the scene when disaster strikes. They also must begin to provide guidance on what kinds of information could be critical in an emergency, so we’ll know what to include and what to leave out. Brian Humphrey and the gang at the LA Fire Department really get it about these Web 2.0 tools, but, sad to say, I’m afraid they’re still in the minority. That’s got to stop — and preferably by Monday morning! Please pass this along to your local police and fire officials.

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homeland security DHS FEMA Department of Homeland Security networked homeland security homeland security 2.0 New Orleans Gustav Gulf Coast Louisiana Katrina crowd-sourcing wisdom of crowds crowdsourcing smart mobs swarm intelligence emergent behavior mobile social networks mesh network location-based services geo-spatial web web 2.0 disaster management 2.0 disaster management business continuity disaster planning disaster planning 2.0 Qik Flickr Twitter DCERN CUWiN