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.

1. Google is big and well used so a good place to get your feeds displayed.
2. 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.

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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

• https://crowdmap.com
• http://ushahidi.com/
• crisismappers.net
• Or give me a shout @likeaword

[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

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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.

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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.

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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

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Citizens are no longer in the dark during emergencies

My Great Aunt Jean asked me about Blackberry Messenger the other day. Three months ago even communication professionals never spoke of it. It was a niche interest amongst youth workers. Now everybody wants to know all about about the technology that appears to have fuelled the English riots.

Those that thought social media was a scary and ungoverned space before see in the riots absolute confirmation of their fears. Those who argued that social media was a way to build new communities and repair our broken society see in the #riotcleanup campaigns evidence that they were right too.

Without noticeable enthusiasm from professionals, politicians mused aloud about switching off networks and blocking access to online services. It was an idea warmly welcomed in China.

Social media appears at once to be immensely significant and depressingly trivial. It is a technology so amorphous that many people struggle to see its relevance at all. Professionals have been gazing at Facebook pages and asking themselves “how can we use this technology?”

Which, if you will forgive me, is the wrong question.

Social media has far greater utility for the individual citizen than it does for state organisations. It enables each individual to communicate instantly over a wide area, to share data and to gain an understanding of the whole situation. This new for the public. It is what responders have been able to do for a long time.

The sudden access that citizens have to their own monitoring and publishing channels reveals how many of our plans rely on our superior access to information and communication.

In principle responders should still have a better understanding of what is taking place in an emergency than the general public. We only have to look at the rumours that swept the country during the riots to see how much poor quality data is shared on public networks.

Even so it is clear that people are making decisions based on the information that they glean out of this mess. The choices of many about where and when to gather and cause disturbances were informed by data flowing around social networks. So were the decisions of those who wanted to do something positive. Those who marched onto the streets with brooms or added a message to the Peckham “Wall of Love” coordinated their actions with their peers. In most cases they did not seek consent from or even consult official channels.

This is a one-way street. Twenty-first century citizens will become more sophisticated about using and sharing data in a crisis. The differential between official understanding of the incident and the public understanding of the incident will shrink, and rapidly.

Responders have access to superior data because there has been no practical alternative. We haven’t sought to keep information away from the public. But they have been kept, to an extent, in ignorance. As that extent diminishes we need to change our plans and procedures in response.

We need to ask “how will other people use this technology?”

This article (but not the image) originally appeared in Resilience Magazine in December 2012 (page 2).

Image is Flame Defining the Darkness by Jeff Golden used under CC BY-SA 2.0

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1. In May in Hartlepool (North East England) fairly localised incident quickly gained traction on social networks. The agencies were not, at that point, heavily engaged in the platforms. http://storify.com/likeaword/hartlepool-incidents-18th-19th-may-2011
2. The English Riots in August marked a real shift in the approach of blue-light services to social networks. Greater Manchester Police were one of the forces that had heavily embraced social networking before the disorder and responded strongly across social networks during and after the riots. http://storify.com/likeaword/gmp-social-media-use-over-riots. I spoke to the force’s Head of Comms shortly after.
3. My local police force was faced with policing a march by the EDL and a counter march while the country was still on riot alert.  In the end the Home Secretary banned marches but the town of Wellington was still pretty tense about the static demonstrations that took place. West Mercia Police and Telford and Wrekin Borough Council took to social media before during and after the demonstrations. http://storify.com/likeaword/case-study-edl-and-other-protests-in-wellington-sh.  I spoke to Neil Tipton from West Mercia later on about digital communications around that time.
4. For various reasons responders in the UK seem to be focusing on the use of social media for warning and informing the public during an emergency. There has been less focus on the use of social media around the recovery phase though this is a real strength of the technology. London Borough of Southwark seemed to me to responding in a very human way to the disorder on twitter. http://storify.com/likeaword/london-borough-of
5. Recently the gangway linking HMS Belfast to the bank of the Thames in central London collapsed rather dramatically. In a demonstration of how things have changed I became aware of the incident because I “Like” the London Fire Brigade page on Facebook. What is particularly striking about this case study is the number of organisations responding on twitter, most of which are not Cat One Responders. http://storify.com/likeaword/gangway-collapse-at-hms-belfast

It seems to me that we urgently need minimum standards around the use of social media in emergencies. I have suggested some minimum practice for LRFs and SCGs here.

Please do add links to other case studies below.

Photo credit: Clipboard by Quinn Dombrowski used under CC BY-SA 2.0

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It seems to me that the time has come to define minimum practice for digital technology use by responders. Here are some initial suggestions.

1. Every Category One Responder* should maintain key social media channels.
Right now this would mean that every council, fire service and health trust would have, at minimum, a facebook page and twitter account.

2. Every Cat One Responder should be able to update its social media channels with a maximum of one hour notice 24/7/365.
For larger responders this means having staff in its control centre trained and empowered to provide updates. For smaller responders this would mean having on-call staff trained and empowered to do the same.

3. Every LRF should have clear protocols for how responders will co-operate with each other on social media channels during an emergency
In an emergency all responders involved should use their own channels to talk from their own competence. They should also ensure that they link, re-tweet and point to the channels of the other responders involved. Where there is a lead responder, other responders should regularly indicate this eg

“Follow @marchfordpolice for the latest updates on #theincidentinthetown”

4. Every Cat One Responder should be able to mobilise variable levels of communications resource to their social media presence in a timely fashion.
As an incident escalates, there will be an increased need to updates and to respond to issues raised on social media. This will quickly require a dedicated resource (ie someone who isn’t trying to actually manage the incident).

5. Every LRF should have arrangements to provide for the monitoring and analysis of the online environment in an emergency.
The general public uses the online environment to share data about emerging situations. In some cases the information being shared may be of direct benefit in improving the information picture. In every case it is important to understand how the public perceive the situation and where they are self-organising. This is a resource-hungry task both in terms of the cost of technology and the people needed. Accordingly it is probably most appropriate to resource on a partnership basis.

6. Every LRF should have considered the risk associated with the loss of Internet connectivity and have appropriate contingency plans in place.
Social media is already, for many people, a vital tool in communicating in emergencies. It is becoming a vital tool for responders. This increases the impact of the loss of connectivity. Connectivity might be lost through power failure, telephone system failure or demand significantly exceeding network capacity. If people can’t get online they may self-evacuate, they may panic and they probably won’t turn on the radio (even if it is battery powered, which it probably isn’t).

7. Social media should be explicitly referenced in every plan, exercise and after-incident review.
I don’t think that needs any exposition.

Those are just my suggestions. I’d love to hear other thoughts.

*Some quick definitions

Emergencies in the UK (or at least in Great Britain) are dealt with by local public bodies: police, local authorities, health trusts, fire, ambulance etc. Those with the duty to deal with emergencies are called “Category One Responders” or “Cat One Responders” if you feel jargony, which clearly I do. They have to co-operate in planning for and dealing with emergencies. They all cover different geographical areas. For clarity they are required to join a partnership based around the police force footprint. In Scotland these partnerships are called Strategic Co-ordinating Groups (SCG). In England and Wales they are called Local resilience Forums (Fora?).

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My task was to speak about how to improve your personal digital skills. Thanks to everyone who stayed and asked questions. Also thanks to Dave Thackery for chairing the whole thing. I promised to put the slides up here. Unusually for my slides I think they stand up without having my commentary.

One theme that ran through the day was the question of trust. The trust organisations must vest in their staff to enable them to use social networking effectively, the trust the public must have in the online expressions of public services (and servants), the trust agencies must vest in  each other, the trust staff must have in their managers and comms teams, and the trust between agencies, the media and the general public.

This is an evolving area. I tend to support view of DCC Gordon Scobbie that managers should start from the point of view of trusting their staff. They trust them to do complex, challenging and difficult jobs. Indeed if managers can’t trust their staff this is surely something for the organisation to reflect upon.

I spoke to someone employed by a large Cat One responder who is banned from mentioning his connection to his employer on social networks. This seems to me to be exactly the opposite of best practice. Anonymity and secrecy destroys rather than building trust. It’s time we moved past this.

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For completeness I’ve also put a copy of my slides from the talk I did on Social Media in Community Resilience last week down in London. Those REALLY won’t mean much if you weren’t at the event. (They may not mean that much if you were).

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