Google starts making emergency alerts more useful

Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org has just launched a new service: Google Public Alerts

Essentially they’ve put public warning messages from a number of US Federal bodies on a map.

This is the start of something exciting.

Right now the fact that you can see warnings of dangerous blizzards in Alaska, while undoubtedly useful to Alaskans, is of passing relevance to UK citizens. This is, as the Google.Org blog makes clear, just a start.

Over time the company plans to allow more agencies, from more parts of the world, submit a feed of alerts (using the Common Alerting Protocol) The alerts will start to show up in more areas of Google’s real estate. Searches on Google Maps or in the main search function might show you relevant alerts depending on the context of where you are and what you are searching from.

Right now the only data on the service comes from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey.

Google is inviting other agencies to express an interest essentially by setting up a CAP feed and sending it to the Alerts project.

This is worth paying attention to for a couple of reasons.

Google is big and well used so a good place to get your feeds displayed.
Burning a CAP feed opens a whole range of options. If every cat 1 responder had a CAP feed we could aggregate them, use them to provide timely strategic data and push them into other services to warn, inform and protect the public.

#ukgc12 session on Ushahidi and Crisis Mapping write-up

I pitched a session on Ushahidi and Crisis Mapping at UK Gov Camp last week. I’ve been playing around with Ushahidi for a little while and paying attention to how these communities are developing. I really think we are at the beginning of a profound humanitarian movement.

It’s not a well-understood platform in the UK and there aren’t many crisis mappers in the public sector. So it was intended as a sort of Ushahidi 101.

Also I’m no developer so I was only able to talk about the application of the application.

I’ve got to say, talking a room full of clever and engaged people through a topic is a fantastic way of improving your own understanding of it. Thanks to everyone who came, this is hopefully a more coherent introduction to the topic thanks to your help, comments and questions.

Ushahidi
In early 2008 some Kenyan developers were concerned about the levels of violence following the disputed elections in their country. They wanted an independent source of reports of what was happening and where. They built a platform that allowed people to SMS reports which could then be placed on a map. They called it “Testimony” in Swahili (Ushahidi). The code was released as open-source and a developer community has been working on the platform ever since.

It can be downloaded and installed on your own server but, luckily for me, the community provides a simple cloud-based solution at crowdmap.com. Sign up and start your own Ushahidi instance.

I set up a simple instance for Gov Camp at ukgc12.crowdmap.com and asked people to submit simple reports: home base and favourite fruit. Thanks to everyone who did.

Reports can be submitted using a customisable form on the instance. This allows the user to plot their location on a map: Ushahidi uses external mapping services, I set mine up to use Google Maps but this is customisable.

The platform will also pull data from an IMAP or POP3 mailbox, through the twitter API and through RSS. It will also handle SMS from a gateway. I installed the SMSSync plugin which allows any android device to become a temporary SMS gateway.

Essentially what Ushahidi does is allow you to place “reports” onto a map. Reports contain text and links to other content. Human beings have to be involved and the platform provides some workflow.

Submissions made through the web form are already reports and so can be placed on the map by checking a box. They then become public (if it’s a public map) or available to restricted users. Reports will be placed into one or more categories and the map can quickly filter for reports matching only some categories.

There is a “verified” option. So you can place reports on the map but indicate that they are unverified. Admins can edit the reports at any time. The system maintains an audit trail of edits.

For other data (email, SMS etc), an admin must create a report to get the data onto the map. The platform is helpful and tracks what happens to individual items.

And you end up with something that looks like this (because Ushahidi uses are often transient you end up with a lot of screenshots rather than links).

Screenshot of the Christchurch Recovery Map

This is the recovery map for Christchurch, NZ post earthquake. Reports there included things like “working wifi” “working landerettes”.

So you can see that the platform has possibilities for a range of uses. It also requires a degree of skill and judgement to be applied in the processing of data into reports.

A practice of “Crisis Mapping” has evolved across the world.

Uses of Ushahidi (Crisis Mapping)
Not all uses of Ushahidi occur in a crisis. Not all crisis mapping occurs on Ushahidi but there is a close relationship between the platform and the practice.

There are a number of ways in which the platform is commonly used

Open crowdsourcing
The general public is invited to submit reports. One or more people process these reports and place them on a map. Usually public.
Nice example: Al-Jazeera English has been asking people in Somalia “How has the Somalia Conflict affected your life?” Responses come back by SMS. They are then translated by volunteers within the diaspora and placed on an Ushahidi map.
The real experience of humans in conflict while that conflict rages.

Bounded crowdsourcing
A closed group of trusted individuals monitor data feeds for particular types of information. They process reports and place them on an Ushahidi instance.
Nice example: The Standby Taskforce which is a global volunteer movement was asked to build a Libya Crisis Map for UN-OCHA during the Libyan conflict in 2011. In the end SBTF did this and then trained UN online volunteers who took over the map. There is a complex workflow required to assess the veracity of reports and create robust data. Much of this has to be handled off the Ushahidi platform.

The output was provided privately to UN-OCHA who then published a redacted version 24hrs later.
(disclosure: I’m a volunteer with SBTF though I was not active on the Libya deployment)

This blog post from a UN-OCHA employee is an interesting read.
Media monitoring
One person or a small group tracks RSS feeds for news and reports relating to a single issue.
This is a UK example with frustratingly little contextual information. Clearly it tracks reports of public sector cuts though

For more information try

[EDIT: Several minutes after posting]

And also I pulled together a few links onto a google doc. Some of which are in the post above.

Photo credit:
Photo is by the genius-like #ashroplad pulled from the #ukgc12 flickr stream and used under CC

Screenshot is from the Christchurch recovery map and used under CC

20 thoughts from #ukgc12

On Friday and Saturday I went to the UK Gov Camp in London. Along with about 300 other, fairly geeky, people. It’s an annual unconference full of energy, ideas and a lot of typing. The excellent Dan Slee has floated the idea of noting down 20 things that struck one after the event. These, for better or worse, are my 20.

I have more to write, in particular about open data in housing, housing benefit apps and Ushahidi. But for now:

1. My netbook running Ubuntu Linux is way cooler than your Macbook Air

2. Many of the issues relating to open data relate to the way organisations perceive and use data rather than openness

3. If anyone asks you to show the ROI of social media you should explain to them that they know nothing about communications

4. The public sector is massive, complex and messy. And it’s only one part of public services

5. We must not lose sight of accountability, governance and power issues in the quest for excellent services

6. When do we move the open data debate out of the state and into corporates?

7. The Ushahidi community and the wider crisis mapping communities are a bit wonderful

8. It’s really healthy to ask why we do this thing (or that thing, or a third thing) at all

9. Talking is great, doing is better, doing without talking first is a waste

10. We maybe don’t have as many models of mutuality as we could do

11. Open data is a governance issue for every organisation. Or should be.

12. QR Codes are so much more wonderful than I had imagined

13. Brompton riders rule

14. While Sharepoint may not be evil, it is a pig. Still, properly wrangled, it’s amazing what a pig can achieve

15. Putting things on maps is cool. Giving others the power to put things on maps is disruptive

16. Shropshire leads the world in Jelly (the foolishly named co-working movement rather than the trifle ingredient). Jelly shows how economic development could be really different

17. We need leaders who understand networks

18. We need to understand networks

19. I am very tired

20. This year will be all about Ushahidi.

Photo is by David J Pearson and depicts one of the delegates (Puffles). Used under CC BY-SA-2.0.

Your website will fail

Your corporate website is robust right? Massively over-specified servers, redundancy and clever load balancing technology make it seamless at managing demand several orders above base level. Clever and dedicated geeks monitor its every move, tweaking and adjusting to keep everything humming along nicely.

No matter. It will still fail.

Websites do fail. They fail all the time and the consequences may well be felt in the real world.

In the Queensland floods local authority websites were overwhelmed by demand for the flood inundation maps at precisely the moment when failing to deliver those maps had severe consequences.

Social networks can spike demand on servers in surprisingly short order to extreme effect. These networks are increasing in scale geometrically.

And there is always a risk of malicious actions, someone pouring coffee into a key router or a problem upstream in the DNS ecosystem.

So what can you do?

1. Clearly continue to work hard to make sure the website doesn’t fail. Critical systems are much more reliable these days than even a few years ago. Cloud-based systems have attraction for their resilience (though may give information managers the heebee geebees).

2. Have excellent back-up arrangements. Plan, exercise and refine the process of restoring from a backup. I work with an EU web-based company who lost their server and found that the promised back-up arrangements were nowhere to be seen. This is not something you want to discover when the data has been lost. The fact that you can sue won’t help your customers on that day.

3. Have alternative web procedures: a “dark site” which gets fired up in extremis or mission critical data distributed onto other platforms. You will also need a plan about how to let people know where this data is to be found. An attractive feature of the growth of social networks is that you can communicate with customers online in a range of platforms. So if you fire up dark.marchford.gov.uk you can let your facebook users know at least.

4. You could also look at this critical data in your web architecture. Maybe those flood inundation maps should be stored on an Amazon machine and not in your server at all. Maybe they should be available in a range of file sizes and quality, delivering smaller files at times of high demand.

5. Exercise. Pull the plug: at 3 on a Sunday morning, in the middle of a live multi-agency exercise, at 1030 on a Friday night. Test those procedures, improve them, make them normal practice.

But the key is to start thinking “when this website fails, what will customers do, what will we do?”.

Because your website will fail.

Interview with Willie Baker: expert in transport emergency management

As winter approaches many people’s thoughts turn to transport emergencies. A fine time then to talk to Willie Baker, consultant and now academic.

You had a distinguished career in the British Transport Police. What attracted you to transport?

I always wanted to be a police officer and when I joined as a cadet at 16 years of age I was not bothered what kind of policing I was going into. I’ve had some incredible experiences during my 33 year career and have learnt such a lot. In so many ways I have been extremely fortunate. It has been a privilege to work with some tremendous people and in some exciting and difficult circumstances. People in the transport industry successfully deal with some really tough challenges on a daily or weekly basis such as fatalities, abusive or violent passengers and all kinds of accidents, and the partnership between the British Transport Police and the industry is, in so many ways, one of the greatest examples of teamwork anyone could wish to see.

You have now launched a Postgraduate Certificate at Wolverhampton University. How are you enjoying being an academic?

Transferring what I have done in my police career, and more recently in my private consultancy into higher education is such an obvious move because there is so much valuable learning to share. As well as all the incidents I was involved in as a police officer I have, in the last three years, done all the emergency preparedness, training and joint live exercises for the two newest passenger railways in the world, that the Dubai Metro and the Makkah Metro in Saudi Arabia. These are both state-of-the-art, driverless systems and required safety certification at the highest levels and equally exacting policies and procedures. Everything was made even more complicated by the fact that the emergency services in those countries had absolutely no experience of passenger railway operations! I have always been committed to the training and development of other people, and was Programme Director at the Bramshill Leadership College for three years, so now moving into mainstream academia is exciting and daunting in equal measures! If anyone would like to know more about the course I would be delighted to hear from them at willie.baker@wlv.ac.uk [it's Christmas so we'll forgive the blatant plug - Ed]

What are the three key risks you would be paying attention to if you were managing a public transport service?

Proper identification of risk, Training and Reputation. I always encourage the transport organisations I work with to take a ‘reasonable’ approach to risk management.

Ask yourself is it reasonably likely that such an event might happen? Its what I call a ‘feet on the ground’ approach. If it is reasonably likely then the organisation should do something about it, and that includes training their staff and their key partners to prepare for and deal with the incident.

A huge part of this joint working requires a proper appreciation of the roles and responsibilities of others, and it is far too late to try and build new relationships with partners when you are just arriving at the scene of the incident for the first time! By getting some fairly simple but important things in place the whole reputation of the organisation will improve and grow, both across the workforce and with customers and stakeholders – and that in turn, drives and strengthens business.

The UK government has published a National Strategic Framework on Community Resilience. What is the role for community resilience in transport emergencies?

Great question! My views align closely with the training issues raised above. The framework is very much connected with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 in which Transport Providers are clearly identified as Category 2 responders. In other words they have an important role to fulfill and they should understand what it is and understand the role and responsibilities of all the others around them. For me that is the important starting point.

The framework sets out in fairly broad detail what local communities can do and should do to best prepare themselves for an emergency, and the whole lot should be viewed as inter-linking and complementary documents.

Let me use a personal example to illustrate. During a particularly bad winter in the early 1980′s I had a small command at Birmingham New Street station. Late one night we received information that a passenger train had got stuck in a deep snow drift, way out in the country and miles from anywhere. There were no mobile phones and the only communication we had was an unreliable and not particularly clear phone link from a line side signal telephone to the signal box which was, again miles from anywhere. It was after midnight, pitch black dark and there were around 20 people stuck on the train with no hope of emergency services getting aid to them let alone the railway incident teams.

The duty manager and I studied Ordnance Survey maps and identified the location, only to confirm that the nearest road access was impassable. Things did not look good. A helicopter would have been a nice idea but its impossible to land one in a snow drift, and to be fair there were more dire emergencies elsewhere. We could see from the map that at the top of the field nearest where the train was stuck was a pub. It was well past closing time but it was our best option so I telephoned the pub expecting to wake the landlord. You can imagine my surprise when he answered the phone and it was obvious from the background noise that he had a bar full of locals all enjoying a lock-in because there was no likelihood of a visit from the local bobby! After much effort to convince him that I was not winding him up, he marshaled every farmer he had in his pub, together with their tractors and 4 x 4′s and his wife put together hot drinks, sandwiches and blankets and off they went in convoy down the hill to the stricken train to provide assistance and comfort to the passengers and crew. That Community Resilience and together we need to get it on a better footing than it was in the 1980′s!

This blog focuses on social media in emergencies. How does social media impact on transport emergencies?

Significantly! And many of us with a background in the emergency services will bear witness to this. The London bombings of 2005 were perhaps one of the earliest most notable events where people were using their mobile telephones to send images of destroyed underground carriages or injured victims receiving medical treatment, and there have been many more since then. I was in Saudi Arabia during the Grimsvotn Volcano eruption in Iceland earlier in 2011, and whilst the national media there suppressed parts of the story it was possible to go online and see vivid images sent to the families of people who were stuck in the most squalid conditions in airports. The appalling treatment they were suffering was of such embarrassment to the Saudi’s that the King himself ordered that facilities be immediately improved for the pilgrims while they were stuck on Saudi Arabian soil.

I think in many cases (myself included) quite large parts of the emergency services have not really got a good enough grasp of the power and effectiveness of Social Media. Putting this right is going to take time, effort and training. We live in a society where people are increasingly inclined to whip out their mobile phone and start recording an event, possibly even before dialing 999, and there is a real and urgent need for the services to be better organised. The terrible pile-up on the M5 motorway on 5th November in which at least seven people died and involved 35 vehicles is one of the first occasions that I can recall part of the police appeal for witnesses specifically including their request to gather mobile phone footage from passing motorists, and this was undoubtedly in their efforts to capture as much evidence as possible.

What will it take to convince you to join twitter?

Probably a bit more pushing from people like Ben Proctor, Mike Alderson and others who know more about it that I do and whom I greatly respect! I sometimes have enough difficulty getting my mobile phone diary synchronized with my computer and my IT skills are not exceptional by any means so I may just need a bit of tutoring!

Photo is Two trains heading our way by The McClouds used under CC BY-SA 2.0