PhiladelphiaMedical Reserve Corps

Virtual Operations Support Team

James GarrowPhiladelphia Department of Public Health

BACKGROUNDVirtual Operations Support Team

Incident Command System

Strategic

Tactical

Public Information Officer

Joint Information System

SOCIAL MEDIA IN DISASTERS

Virtual Operations Support Team

Haiti Earthquake

“witness, or testify”

US Airways Flight 1549

Take Off3:25

Crash landing3:31

First Tweet3:33

Image posted to Twitter

3:36

Image posted to Flickr

3:39

FlightStats not updated

4:31

Google Trends not updated

5:00+

Untimed Mass Media Reports

H1N1

Tohoku Earthquake

twitter visualization

NEEDVirtual Operations Support Team

VOST Concept

Official response

Rest of the world Rest of the world

Rest of the worldRest of the world

NEMA Barcamp

NEMA Barcamp

Shadow Lake Wildland Fire

Shadow Lake Wildland Fire

"One of those trucks went across the bridge!" she told me. "Wow. Even the school bus doesn't cross that bridge. It's not designed for large trucks.

When we saw them going up that road, we wanted to run out and wave our hands, yelling wrong way, wrong way!“

-hinessight.blogs.com

PMRC-VOSTVirtual Operations Support Team

Organization within JIS

Operations

• Check in on Google Doc– Virtual Status Board

• Work with Team Leader to divide up work– Identify keywords– Identify social networks– Identify “super-sharers”

• Monitor, track and respond– As appropriate– ONLY with approved facts

Tools

• Depends on skillset and comfort of activated• Maintain expertise between activations• Start with the big guys– Twitter– Facebook– Picfog– Topsy– YouTube– Ustream

Forms

• VOST-modified ICS Form 205A– Communications List– How to keep track of everyone

• VOST-modified ICS Form 214– Activity Log– How to keep track of everything you’ve done

Many thanks