Applying citizen science model to disaster management

Applying the citizen science model to disaster management

W. David StephensonStephenson Strategies

NAS Public Response to Alerts and Warnings using Social Media Workshop

February 29, 2012

What if social media were to make the public full partners in emergency communications? I will outline a scenario in my talk by which I believe training the public to provide accurate information would be feasible.

That’s not the situation at present.

While of>icials are now belatedly coming around to using social media as an alternative broadcasting medium to disseminate of>icial information in disasters, most remain leery of actively soliciting information from the public via social media and mobile devices, usually citing questions about its reliability. As FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate summarized the prevailing wisdom in a speech earlier this month, most of his colleagues see the public as “…not worthy, not trustworthy, you have not been cleared. You do not have a background check… you panic in an disaster, and cannot be relied upon to think rationally...” Fugate, by contrast, is open to public input via the social media. As he said in Congressional testimony:

“I often say that individuals, families and communities are our nation's ‘>irst' >irst responders. The sooner we are able to ascertain the on-‐the-‐ground reality of a situation, the better we will be able to coordinate our response effort in support of our citizens and >irst responders. Through the use of social media, we can disseminate important information to individuals and communities, while also receiving essential real-‐time updates from those with >irst-‐hand awareness…” But even Fugate sets a low bar for accuracy of information gathered via the social media, emphasizing that what he’s interested in is primarily a large number of data points that

indicate the need for prompt action, rather than expecting that information necessarily being scrupulously accurate. As he said, “ .. we looked at social media as the public telling us enough information to suggest this is worse than we thought to make decisions to spend … your money without …. waiting for a formal request, without assessments. …. All I need is enough information to hit my tipping point. I don’t need a lot of information….”

Emergent behavior

While I understand his point, I think that Administrator Fugate sets too low expectations for the public. Why can’t we provide information that is not only valuable because of its volume, but also its accuracy?

If individuals actually did provide accurate information that would really be actionable, and provide substantive situational awareness, that would be consistent with what we know of behavior in general during disasters. Unlike the stereotype of un-‐credentialed, panic-‐prone individuals, years of research at the two primary disaster research centers, the Universities of Delaware and Colorado, have demonstrated that what happens in emergencies is the kind of “emergent behavior” that this termite colony, and the other social insects demonstrate. A large number of individuals, acting largely on their own and self-‐directed, cobble together highly sophisticated collaborative actions. Emergent behavior is a higher level of collective behavior -‐-‐ and combined intelligence -‐-‐ that couldn’t be predicted from the behavior of individuals. The group becomes a highly capable “superorganism.”

As the Delaware researchers report, “Studies of evacuation at times of crises have now been undertaken for the last 50 years. They have consistently shown that at times of great crises, much of the organized behavior is emergent rather than traditional [such as this evacuation from lower Manhattan on 9/11]. In addition, it is of a very decentralized nature, with the dominance of pluralistic decision making, and the appearance of imaginative and innovative new attempts to cope with the contingencies that typically appear in major disasters.” What could be more ideal than the combination of existing patterns of emergent behavior in disasters and the advent of social media that directly encourage and facilitate emergent behavior?

It seems to me that there are two relevant analogies: World War II plane spotters and the growing phenomenon of web-‐enabled “citizen science.” During World War II, those on the homefront, from housewives to elderly men, were trained to spot both Allied and Axis planes through tools such as these decks of playing cards. On a number of occasions the plane spotters were able to identify US planes that crashed, and even though I haven’t been able to document any cases where they actually spotted Axis planes over the continental U.S., I have no doubts that the attention to detail in the playing cards and other training and the volunteers’ zeal would have made that feasible if needed. Updating that approach, I was one of many volunteers who “searched” for Steve Fawcett’s downed plane by using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system. We were given a visualization of what the plane might look like if crashed into a mountainous area and then asked to examine photos of a number of quadrants in the area where the plane was believed to have crashed to see if there was any similar visual evidence.

Citizen science

More relevant to using the social media and mobile devices in disasters is the current phenomenon of citizen science, which harnesses the interest of everyday people in using 21st-‐century technology to participate in scholarly research. According to the Citizen Science Alliance, citizen science:• “.. [is able] to cope with extremely large data sets • .. provides quantitative estimates of error. This is an essential part of the 'wisdom of crowds', allowing us to understand the accuracy of the data we provide.• … naturally provide[s] large and powerful training sets for machine learning approaches to classi>ication problems. This is an essential part of our future; as data sets continue to grow we will need to hand off more and more of the routine tasks to machines; by doing citizen science today we can help train them.• … [can lead to serendipitous discovery ]Serendipitous discovery is a natural consequence of exposing data to large numbers of users, and is something that is very dif>icult to program into automatic routines. Humans are naturally programmed to keep an eye out for the weird and the odd, even while sorting most objects into more mundane categories.• While the primary goal of our projects is to produce academic research, by their very nature they are also outreach projects. As it involves our volunteers directly in the process of research, citizen science is a powerful tool for both formal and informal education. Unlike traditional education programs, from the moment users >irst interact with one of our project, they are not only learning but also contributing to science.” Doesn’t that emphasis on classifying a large number of data points and serendipitous discovery sound similar to >irst responders’ need for rapid reporting of wide assortments of disaster information?

These approaches have led to signi>icant scienti>ic progress. One amateur astronomy researcher participating in the Galaxy Zoo project found “Hanny’s Voorwerp, a dust cloud generated by a nearby quasar, and participants In the National Geographic’s Field Expedition: Mongolia analyze GeoEye satellite images to identify potential dig sites for archaeologists to explore in Mongolia. The information provided by amateurs is detailed and scienti>ically valid.

This scienti>ic rigor doesn’t just happen: the supervising institutions put a lot of effect into creating simple, easy-‐to-‐follow educational programs to train the volunteers. Why can’t that be the case for emergency response as well?

#wxreport

One government agency that I think does follow the citizen science model about soliciting speci>ic information from the public during a disaster is the National Weather Service. It urges people observing exceptional weather patterns to submit Tweets using the hashtag #wxreport. The hashtag makes the Tweet machine-‐readable, so that the information becomes additional data points for forecasters to consider. Given the importance of hyperlocal conditions such as microbursts, this can be invaluable information for the NWS.

Applying the citizen science model to disaster response is not just an academic intererest for me: I have been directly involved in several projects over the past decade that I believe show it is possible to use the same technologies that individuals can use to report disaster to train them and/or give them the tools in advance needed to provide accurate, actionalble information. Nine years ago I created what I believe is still the only comprehensive program for smartphones to give the average person – in his or her hand – all of the relevant information needed to prepare for, report and respond to a disaster.

Later I prepared a series of YouTube videos with speci>ic information on social media and other tools for disaster response – a project that I’m belatedly subjecting to some long-‐overdue updating.

VITA Wireless when you need it most

Finally, I designed strategies for the Wireless Foundation and National Public Radio to train the public about how to use social media in combination with their wireless devices to report to authorities during a disaster. If I could do this by myself and with limited resources, imagine what could be done if government and industry groups such as the Wireless Foundation were to partner to design high-‐quality, compelling outreach programs?

Tweak the Tweet

I’d like to conclude by focusing on two areas consistent with the citizen science approach that I think might be particularly effective ways to increase the accuracy of citizen reporting in disasters.

One is to actively promote the Tweak the Tweet program that Leysia Palen and her Project EPIC colleagues created to make tweets more focused and machine readable in disasters, similar to the NWS hashtags. The system is made up of a series of simple, easy-‐to-‐remember and short – so they don’t use too many of the precious 140 characters in a tweet –hashtags that serve to identify the data that follow them. Like the NWS hashtag, the TtT hashtags make the data that follows each of them machine readable. The system was rushed into service during the height of the Haiti earthquake recovery, and proved a valuable way of structuring the information that residents and aid workers were reporting from the scene of the diaster. For my own use I’ve prepared a laminated wallet-‐sized card with my emergency contact information on one side and the TtT hashtags on the other, to make certain that I’d have the information on me if needed. Why couldn’t similar cards be mass-‐produced?

Twitter videos

Finally, I’d like to focus on one aspect of social media that I don’t believe gets enough attention from any of>icials in disasters: streaming media sources such as Twitvid, posterous, or vimio.

Many of us now carry smartphones capable of recording and broadcasting, in real time, many minutes of High De>inition video. Of course there are many disasters where bandwidth is severely limited, making Twitter the tool of choice because of its low bandwidth requirements, but when infrastructure is intact, consider the wealth of information that could be conveyed by a willing volunteer panning his or her smartphone while also narrating what is being said:ν ! an assessment of priority damage (downed utilities, buildings hit by explosions, residences destroyed, etc.)ν ! placing the video in context (including content such as landmarks) ν ! identifying possible terrorists who run from the scene

Multiple videos shot from multiple perspectives can help authorities assemble a literal and/or a >igurative comprehensive view -‐-‐ talk about situational awareness!

One need only remember the video shot by a Virginia Tech student immediately after the mass shootings there that was rebroadcast ad nauseum by the cable news channels, or the countless videos of violence during the Arab Spring demonstrates to appreciate the wealth of information that could be conveyed by such a video. Yet, I have been unable to >ind any public agency that gives guidance on what to include in such videos and how to submit them.

For more information:

W. David StephensonStephenson [email protected] 740-8918

... And don’t forget to read Data Dynamite: how liberating information will transform our world.

I agree with Administrator Fugate that sometimes the barest of real-‐time information can be invaluable to >irst responders in determining the scope of the affected area and the resources to mobilize. But does that mean that we should automatically settle for the lowest common-‐denominator information from citizen responders? That’s not good enough for citizen science experiments, which have proven that amateurs are able to provide accurate information if they are educated in advance about what is needed. I believe that, if given the information they need in easily accessed forms, citizen responders will provide information that is not only timely but also increasingly accurate. Let’s launch education programs that will do just that. Thank you.

Applying citizen science model to disaster management

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