Stephenson and Bonabeau's article (2007) proposes an alternative strategic approach for emergencies that utilises the concepts of 'swarm intelligence' and 'netwar' (2007, p. 2), a combination of collaborative, self organising action, networking tools and applications controlled by the end users without central authorities. Authorities traditionally follow the command-and-control emergency response management model for crisis situations and are reluctant to embrace a networked strategy for an emergency response because of the loss of top-down command-and-control (2007, p. 7), even though these new technologies have been utilised effectively by the people themselves in the face of disaster.

The article by Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird and Palen (2010) demonstrates the power of the public to network in a disaster and utilise 'swarm intelligence' type behaviours when experiencing floods and fires, collaboratively improving situation awareness through the use of Twitter.

You Tube - 'Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide' (2010) is a case where Stephenson and Bonabeau's idea's are seen as a result of the spontaneous response by stake holder Patrick Meier, who set in motion the development of a collaborative and self organised project , fostered by the use of radio broadcasts, network tools, devices and applications, volunteers and US response groups, to map crisis points online and get aid to victims of the Haiti earthquake.

This is a useful resource as it presents an alternative emergency management model for authorities, to develop a collaborative structure that embraces public networking tools in an emergency situation. The article is published in a peer-reviewed online journal, well referenced and provides details of the authors' background and authority on the topic.

References

Stephenson, W.D. & Bonabeau, E. (2007). Expecting the Unexpected: The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Strategy. Homeland Security Affairs, 3 (1). Retrieved from http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=3.1.3

Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI), (pp. 1079 - 1088). Atlanta, GA: ACM.
Retrieved from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf

You Tube Need to Know | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide | Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE

Sutton's article discusses the use of Twitter following a technological disaster on 22 December 2008 at the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Kingston Fossil Plant where a coal waste containment pond spilled coal fly ash into the valley and tributaries of the Tennessee River, causing more damage than the highly publicised Exxon Valdez disaster of 1989, but the incident was not broadcasted in major news media until 3 days after the event on 25 December. The lack of response from the media became a rallying point for activists and individuals to use Twitter, following the disaster, to broadcast awareness of the hazardous consequences of the situation. The authors noted the lack of posts from the local community and the public, with non local becoming the ones who challenged and corrected misinformation, becoming the public editors. Due to the lack of participation on Twitter by those most affected, "the virtual community converged to offer support through their mobilization of information (Sutton, 2010, p. 8).

In contrast, the article by Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird and Palen (2010), shows how Twitter was used by people on the ground during two concurrent emergency events, in a collaborative and cooperative way, broadcasting similar types of information to inform and warn of current danger, their posts creating an accurate big picture, and awareness of the crisis. In this case the people most affected by the crisis controlled the situational updates and were their posts were trusted and confirmed.

The detailed and academic discussion of the research methodology, results and discussion, contribute to the reliability and usefulness of Sutton's article, as this Twitter study is the first for a technological disaster.

References

Sutton, N. J. (2010). Twittering Tennessee: Distributed Networks and Collaboration Following a Technological Disaster. Proceedings of the 7th International ISCRAM Conference, Seattle, USA, May 2010 (pp. 1-10). Retrieved from http://www.jeannettesutton.com/uploads/Twittering_Tennessee_FINAL.pdf

Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Human Interaction (CHI), (pp. 1079-1088). Atlanta, GA: ACM. Retrieved from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf

Collins article is a useful resource as it discusses the need to increase hyper-connectivity in civil-military responses, with government and non-government organisations engaging with the wider networked community to improve disaster response and management, particularly in Australia, United States and United Kingdom. Hyper-connectivity increases the capacity to gather, filter and act on emergent information from a wide range of sources (2011, p.3).

This concept can be seen in the You Tube - 'Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide' (2011). Ushahidi, a Free and Open Source software and a Volunteer Technical Community (VTC), set up a network to provide situational awareness utilising readily available radio, mobile text, network tools and applications, volunteers and civil-military response groups, to collaboratively map crisis points online to provide timely aid to victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Collins claims there are glaring gaps in the civil-military communities, with low levels of awareness of VTC's, of hyper-connectedness, of networked communities, and skill with use of social technologies (2011, p. 5-6). Yates and Paquette's study (2010) is evidence of this lack of skill as one of the authors was assigned to configure social media tools for the US military response team. Through the authors involvement, Wikis were developed collaboratively and cooperatively, for the sharing of information within and between agencies, reducing duplication of effort, saving time and improving the emergency response - the first time the US Government relied "on social media to coordinate knowledge and action between cooperating agencies" (p. 7).

The Queensland Police Service displayed engagement with network communities and tools with their extensive use of Twitter and Facebook to broadcast accurate information and correct misinformation during the Queensland Floods and Tropical Cyclone Yasi of 2010/2011 (Freeman (2011).

Collin's article is well referenced, substantially drawing on the literature to reinforce his case.

References

Collins, S. (May 19, 2011). Conflict and Disaster Management in a Hyper-connected World - Cooperative, Collaborative, Real Time. (Referenced version). Retrieved from http://acidlabs-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/Conflict%20and%20disaster%20management%20in%20a%20hyperconnected%20world.pdf

Freeman, M. (2011). Fire, Wind and Water: Social Networks in Natural Disasters. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 13 (2), 69 -79.

Yates, D & Paquette, S. (2010) Emergency Knowledge Management and Social Media Technologies: A case Study of the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, International Journal of Information Management. 31 (1), p. 6-13. Retrieved from
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401210001453)

YouTube Need to Know. (2011). Crisis Mappers: Mobile Technology Helps Disaster Victims Worldwide. Program: Need to Know. Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE

This CRS (Congressional Research Service) Report for Congress by Lindsay, provides an organisational perspective of how social media have been and might be used to improve emergency response and recovery by US agencies.

Lindsay found that most emergency management organisations have confined their use of social media to disseminating public safety information, but proposes an alternative approach to Congress, to use social media systematically as an emergency management tool. One of his proposals is to have response organisations monitor social media sources during emergencies to help establish situational awareness. Vieweg, Hughes, Starbird and Palen (2010) put together a framework that could be used to develop a software that would automate the monitoring of tweets for situational awareness during an emergency, following their analysis of "situational update" information tweeted by individuals experiencing fires and floods in the US Spring of 2009. Freeman (2011) found that the Queensland Police Service used Twitter and Facebook extensively to broadcast accurate information and correct misinformation to those affected by the Queensland Floods of 2010/2011 and Tropical Cyclone Yasi in 2011, combining bottom up sources with top down broadcasts.

Lindsay focuses on social media usage to communications with the public. Yates and Paquette's article (2010) on the other hand, provides the first example of the U.S. Government's reliance "on social media to coordinate knowledge and action between cooperating agencies" (p. 7). Use of wikis became a major tool to allow the sharing and collaborating of knowledge following the Haiti earthquake within AFCAT (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff's Crisis Action Team) and between agencies to provide a more efficient and effective emergency management response.

A useful article providing an insight into US emergency organisations use of social media, with future directions for emergency management. Congressional sources provide an insight not readily accessible.

References

Freeman, M. (2011). Fire, Wind and Water: Social Networks in Natural Disasters. Journal of Cases on Information Technology, 13 (2), 69 -79.

Lindsay, B.R. (2011). Social Media and Disasters: Current Uses, Future Options, and Policy Considerations. Congressional Research Service Reports. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/R41987.pdf

Yates, D & Paquette, S. (2010) Emergency knowledge management and social media technologies: A case study of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, International Journal of Information Management, 31 (1), 6-13.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401210001453)

You Tube Need to Know | Crisis mappers: Mobile technology helps disaster victims worldwide | Uploaded by PBS . Retrieved 20 March 2012 http://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=xW7Vt5iunWE This YouTube presentation tells the story of how crisis mapping came to be a source of critical and timely support to Haitians requiring aid following the 2010 devastating earthquake. It is a remarkable example of resourcefulness, voluntary collaboration and use of social media to assist with the humanitarian aid response. The video includes a live interview with, Patrick Meier, head of Ushahidi, a not-for-profit organisation, who explains that within hours of the news of the quake reaching the world, he knew that it would be a real challenge to get information from people on the ground in Haiti. Based on the Haitians high mobile ownership (85%) he worked out that texting a message would be the best way to find out who needed help. He arranged for a local phone company to provide a number for emergency texts. The number is advertised on the radio as 90% of the population has radio access. A call was put out on Facebook to locate volunteers who could translate messages from Haitian Kreyol to English. These messages are then forwarded to Boston where a voluntary group of students plot the location on an online map. The online location is then forwarded to the US response group coordinating the distribution of aid. Within hours help is sent. I came across this video when sourcing materials and was impressed with the professional presentation, the inclusion of a Haitian recipients experience of receiving aid after texting the number he heard on the radio, and interviews with major stakeholders. Further searches of Patrick Meier verified the story. Crisis mapping was also used during the Libyan crisis to bring aid to victims. Crisis locations were extracted from posts for help on Facebook and Twitter and plotted by volunteers

Freeman, M. (2011). Fire, Wind and Water: Social Networks in Natural Disasters. Journal of Cases on Information Technology,13 (2), p.69 -79. A study of the increasing adoption of social networking tools (SNTs) as a channel for critical communication during disasters in Australia, is the platform used by the author to look into how society is accepting the use of SNTs as a whole for emergency management. Using recent natural disasters, the use of SNT's is traced from their limited use during the Victorian Bushfires in 2009 to their increased use and the reliance on SNTs by authorities and individuals, during the Queensland Floods of 2010/2011 and Tropical Cyclone Yasi in 2011 (February). During the fires of 2009, Twitter was used by the ABC radio station 774 Melbourne to provide as much coverage of the fires as possible. Followers increased from 250 to 1200 indicating the popularity of this form of communication, and offering an sight for future use. Two years later, the Queensland Police Service used Twitter and Facebook extensively to broadcast accurate information to those affected by the floods and correct misinformation. The same tactics were employed for Tropical Cyclone Yasi. Technologies are discussed as a medium of communication for accurate and timely information during disasters and for the sharing of knowledge, increasingly coming from the bottom up, but also utilised appropriately from the top down when required. Although this article was easy to understand, the author's discussion of the disasters and technologies, the extensive discussion of qualitative research, followed by a presentation of the case, lead to a repetition of information about the disasters. A more succinct and structured presentation of the results of this triangulated approach to research would have made it easier to appreciate the benefits of SNTs to communities.

Vieweg, S., Hughes, A., Starbird, K & Palen, L. (2010). Microblogging During Two Natural Hazards Events: What Twitter May Contribute to Situational Awareness. Retrieved 15 March 2012 from http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~palen/vieweg_1700_chi2010.pdf Individuals affected by the emergency events of the Red River Floods and the Oklahoma Grassfires in North America during the Spring of 2009, posted information about their respective situations via the microblogging service, Twitter. In this study, the authors analyse "situational update" information tweeted by individuals experiencing these hazards 'on the ground' to see how these people used the tweets to inform and develop an awareness of the current situation within their community. Twitter is seen as a commonly used social tool increasingly used for emergency communications "because of its growing ubiquity, communication rapidity, and cross platform accessibility", and are "a place for "harvesting" information during a crisis event to determine what is happening on the ground". From the analysis of collected data, coding was allocated by geo-location, location referencing and situational update information. Findings indicated Tweeters broadcasted similar types of information in both emergency situations, and tweets of high Tweeterers during emergencies were 'content rich' and displayed 'big picture situational awareness', with retweets indicating important updates. This study confirms how individuals facing a crisis rely on social media for their own safety and use the tool for altruistic purposes by providing current awareness of the crisis. In addition, the authors developed a Microblog-Enhanced Situational Features for Emergency outline of information categories for use in emergency response. They suggest this outline be used to assist with the development of system s

This article looks at the value of social media as a knowledge management platform for managing emergency responses by organisations to disasters, based on a case study of the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. The US was a major stakeholder in coordinating the emergency response to this humanitarian crisis and had, prior to this event, relied on manually intensive and centralised knowledge management systems. This was the first time the U.S. Government "relied on social media to coordinate knowledge and action between cooperating agencies" (p. 7). Data was gathered by one of the participating authors assigned to AFCAT (U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff's Crisis Action Team) to configure social media tools. SharePoint, newly introduced to the organisation, provided a new basis for knowledge sharing. Previously, the only opportunity for staff to find out what others were doing was during information briefings. The SharePoint platform supported mechanisms for knowledge sharing within the team, and Haiti specific wiki pages were developed by participating agencies using a common government MediaWiki platform. Together, these social media tools increased the flow and form of knowledge as they allowed knowledge to be: o shared - it was now visible and accessible within and between agencies o reused as new knowledge o verified and usefulness rated o removed duplication of effort o facilitated collaboration and cooperation between groups Conversely, this study found that the uncontrolled uploading of information to wikis required organisations to put systems in place to manage and monitor the content of wikis. Accuracy of information for emergency response by organisations is critical. This peer reviewed article provided a theoretical framework for social media as it applies to disaster management. I found it took several readings to absorb the content and it was difficult to work out what social media tools were actually created beside wikis.