Christa_harris's List: C. Harris Digital Citizenship Research List

• The secondary disaster was the unbelievably poor communication and response that occurred between federal, regional, state, and local relief agencies and efforts after the hurricane. The combination of these two back-to-back disasters has caused catastrophic damage to a vast human population.
• The New Orleans-based Katrina Aftermath blog [http://katrina05.blogspot.com], still publishing updates, noted: “Text messaging has been the saving technology for us in this hurricane. While the normal voice circuits have been down completely (in New Orleans) or clogged (in Baton Rouge), text messages have been getting through even to those completely cut off in every other way. It’s interesting so many older mobile phone users just aren’t into texting, and so they never use it. Now, they’re learning on the spot.”

• Everbridge mass communication and emergency notification system. With over 20% of Middlefield households without an active landline telephone, Everbridge’s capability to simultaneously broadcast information across a variety of contact paths including mobile phone, SMS, pager, landlines and email provided town officials the ability to communicate their message as efficiently as possible.

• About Everbridge 

   Everbridge provides industry-leading interactive communication and mass notification solutions to organizations in all major industries and government sectors.  Everbridge solutions increase connectivity to key audiences, automate communication processes, and integrate social media, data feeds, and recipient feedback into a single communications console.  Ultimately, these solutions provide the insight and infrastructure that help clients save lives, manage critical activities and improve the efficiency of daily operations. For more information about Everbridge, please see www.everbridge.com.

• communications during future disasters. “This is a little different from what I expected Twitter to be used for; not only to help people get the help they needed but to dispel rumors [and] share information about what certain people should be doing if something is happening around them,” she said. “This has given us a look at how Twitter will be used in the future. And it was a good introduction and a good way to figure out how we can best use
• it for emergencies in the future.”
• A local church, inundated by the flood of donations, posted on Facebook daily lists of needs, such as flashlights, batteries and cleaning materials like buckets, Thompson said.  “Once they started to become more specific about what their needs were, the spontaneous donations still came in but they got more of what they actually needed.”
• The preparedness materials say you should have batteries and radios, but when we arrived seven days after the storm struck, those batteries are dead,” Thompson said. Preparing for three to five days is old, and “educated” people say be prepared to be self-sufficient for 10 days, Thompson said.
• with solar-powered battery packs that provided light and power for cellphones, laptops and printers. “Prior to that we were using a 12-volt car battery, which we had to haul out into the street to recharge,” Thompson said.

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• said there weren’t interpreters for non-English-speaking residents.
• the power was out, there was no cell reception and no signs were posted anywhere. “Cellphones weren’t working and batteries went dead anyway,” she said. “People would leave us looking for reception and use all their battery power just looking for reception.”
• Fontes remembered being in an earthquake two years ago and evacuating to a park with other residents. He said everyone there benefited from those texting or using social media to get information.
   
   That was borne out during Sandy too as the New York City Fire Department’s Social Media Manager Emily Rahimi kept citizens abreast of Sandy news and responded to their pleas for information.
• tweeted right on through until around 6 p.m. Tuesday.
• But even Rahimi was startled by the amount of activity on Twitter and the nature of the tweets

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• complaints
• about a lack of information were common
• Although there were areas hit by the storms that fared well soon afterward
• there were “black holes,” where printed paper and bullhorns were needed to get out the word
• . Social media was a bright spot, as Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker showed on Twitter, and in New York City where Emily Rahimi chained herself to her desk at the Fire Department for a day and a half, monitoring the department’s Twitter feed and proving heroic to desperate residents.
• Chris Thompson, president of Humanity Road, said she got to 17-mile-long Rockaway Peninsula in New York seven days into Sandy and she was sitting in a “doughnut hole of a total blackout. There was still no communications to speak of,” she said. There was about a 17-mile by 15-mile square that was completely blacked out.
• Thompson said residents shared information by congregating at local hubs like churches, community centers and schools. “They would gather around and talk to each other and say, ‘What do you know?’ Information was not flowing.” She said information was shared via fliers but there was just one printer — the one she had brought.

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• Presidential task force urges federal government to ensure wireless communications and data networks have reliable power to speed disaster recovery.
• Such a strategy would include the deployment of "smart microgrids," small-scale versions of the centralized electricity system that distribute power in a limited geographic area and help minimize widespread power outages.
• The task force also said encouraging the easy availability of "stored power" (e.g., batteries) through funding to support consumer-level broadband will help individuals seek information, help with recovery needs, communicate with family members, and work from home when transportation or business facilities are compromised.

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