Information Sharing for Emergency Response & Recovery

Increasing operational capacity & data interoperability to enable intelligent

decision-making

Lew ShortGroup Manager Community Resilience

NSW Rural Fire Service

Public policy is getting more complex

People expect information as it

arrives

Our previous good responses

may have created a culture of

immediacy in the community

The world has entered the era of ‘mega crisis’

or catastrophic emergencies’ whose force

and magnitude defy even the best laid

plans and the most robust response

systems

• Resilience refers to a person or communities ability to

withstand a disaster and its consequences, to bounce

back and return to its pre-disaster state quickly.

• Community resilience refers to individual and collective

capacity to respond to adversity and to function at a

level far greater than expected given the individuals

previous experiences.

• Building and establishing community resilience

involves engaging communities4

Community

• Interact, share information,

share ideas & ask questions

• Frame the conversation

• launch resources

• Community of interest

• remove feelings of isolation

Engagement• Stakeholders who own the problem and solution;• New ideas and options;• Informed and enduring decisions;• Changes in understanding and behaviour;

Connectedness• To share• To be part of a community• We let participants know how their contribution has made a difference

Empowerment• To report• To Identify

7

In the Event of a Bushfire• Roughly one half of respondents indicated they

would leave. • For many the trigger to leave their home was

being advised by the RFS, SES, Police or other authority.

• 80% of people will wait and see• Dependency on information• Greg Goebel “learned helplessness”

The Purple Cow

Seth Godin

Interoperability

• Seamless Interoperability

should be the word we use

• Crisis Coordination Centre

• The community don’t really

care who turns up as long as

someone does

Gov 2.0 & Web 2.0

• Gov 2.0, is the use of technology—especially the collaborative technologies at the heart of Web 2.0—to better solve collective problems at a city, state, national, and international level.

• web 2.0 applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web.

On an average day:• 47 billion (non spam) emails• 95 million tweets on Twitter• 30 billion pieces of content

shared on FacebookSource. The Emergence of a New Asset Class. World Economic Forum

(2011)

Stuart Ellis slide

System capability

• QLD Police slide on growth of their Facebook

page during floods from 8k to 160k likes

almost overnight.

• 94 million views over 24hrs

• Craig Lapsley – cloud based

Surge capability

• How do we capitalise on this

• Crisis commons and mapping by volunteers

• Are our people able to operate seamlessly?

• The term open source describes practices in

production and development that promote

access to the end product's source materials.

Current RFS Social Media activity• Several organisational Twitter accounts

• A number of RFS individuals using their Twitter accounts

to shore RFS information

• An RSS feed for warnings and alerts

• Common Operating Picture: a Google Maps mash-up

showing current incidents

• Several official and regional Facebook pages

• Photo and video sharing through RFS specific channels on

sites such as Flickr and YouTube

The RFS Social Media

Landscape

.

Technology• Line scanning - IR and heat source• Helicopters, eye in the sky – cameras• Lightning strike data• Modis – hotspots• Mobile devices – iPhone App• Google maps mashups• RSS feeds and resulting mashups

NSW1993/94 2002/03 2006/07 2009/10

Number of bush fires statewide

800 459 2,871 4,104

Duration of S44s –Days

17 days 151 days 113 days 118 days

Area Burnt Ha 800,000 1,465,000 438,218 366,159

Residential Homes destroyed

206 86 8 24

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(~50

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Potential:• Loss of radio & telco towers• Loss of situational awareness

Weather included: temperatures up to 45o

winds in excess of 90km/h relative humidity as low as 6% Fire Danger Ratings of up to 100

2001/2002:

ACT, NSW, TAS

Others have difficulty providing unified feed

Offer of RFS assistance

• RFS is providing RSS feeds of our incidents which a

number of applications and web pages are using.

• Issues with incidents not being mapped or assigned

an alert level which is flowing through to our COP on

the RFS web page and to external users

Remember…

• How common is a Common Operating Picture

• Would we ever consider a system of systems

• What is happening anyway

The Crowd Delivers: DARPA’s XC2V Military Vehicle Arrives On Time

• “Now, while a new kick-ass military vehicle is

cool, the true goal of DARPA’s competition

was to see how much faster a crowd-sourced

project could go from concept to prototype

than traditional means.

• Turns out the answer was “much faster”

Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Engagement• Stakeholders who own the problem and solution;• New ideas and options;• Informed and enduring decisions;• Changes in understanding and behaviour;

Connectedness• To share• To be part of a community• We let participants know how their contribution has made a difference

Empowerment• To report• To Identify

= Resilience

The Way Forward

• Socially-enabled

• Mobile-friendly

• On Demand

• Track Twitter, social networks, blogs,

discussion boards, content sites

• Make content and data available for use by

others

– The Social Media landscape can be

monitored and influenced, but not

controlled.

– ESO need to become part of the

conversation.

– Social Media is an important tool to assist in

getting the ‘Safety Message’ out to the

community.

• Go where the people are

• Give up the illusion of control

• Tap into the crowd… and

• Be mindful of the big events

How do we use your Purple Cow?

“We can no longer afford to

work at the speed of

government… We have

responsibilities to the

public to move

information as quickly as

possible… so that they

can make key decisions”Los Angeles Fire Department

Ta much

Lew.short@rfs.nsw.gov.auLew Short lewshort14