Assigned Blog #12

Reflection on the class:

                Overall I enjoyed taking this class; it was a lot more interesting than previous SRA classes I have taken in the past. I like the way the class was designed; everything from the class reading, class leaders, weekly blog posts, and guest speakers was interesting. I feel like this was a perfect combination of assignments to get the class information across and it kept me interested.

Usually I get bored with reading class material in most of my classes, but the material assigned in this class was great. I really enjoyed the weekly readings assigned to the class each week. I felt like I learned something new every time I read each article. On top of that, I found the readings to be interesting and informative. A lot of the articles were full of statistics and percentages, but the authors kept me in-tune by providing graphs and tables to depict the point they were trying to get across.

Throughout the semester each student was assigned to be a leader for one of the weekly assigned readings. I think this was an excellent idea because I had to really understand each article I was assigned to present that week in class. I also had to understand the other information assigned because, we had to be prepared to ask question to each of the students who presented during that class. I also learned a lot of information because the students did of great job of NOT boring the class to death by what I like to call “death by power-point.” Instead of presenting the assigned reading material by reading material verbatim off of a power-point, each student kept their presentations short and to the point.

The weekly blog posts were something I wasn’t used to. At first I didn’t think I was going to like being required to blog about class information each week. But, it turns out it wasn’t so bad after all. I actually enjoyed reading what other students thought about the class that week or what they thought about each speaker we had. By blogging with the class I was able to view my opinions from different angles and maybe be influenced by the way other students thought about the subject. We also had to reply to at least two other blog posts each week. This gave me the chance to see what other students thought about my opinions and idea, and it also gave me a chance to let other students know what I thought about their blogs.

In SRA 397A we had a variety of speakers come to State College to speak to our class about the occupations and achievements.   It was cool to hear about what our guest speakers have done in the past and what the plan to do in the future. It was cool to have them come and speak in person because the class was able to interact with the guest and directly ask questions and get involved with the presentations. I didn’t particularly enjoy the telecom presentations; they tended to bore me, and were usually having technical difficulties. Over-all, I really enjoyed hearing from the guest speakers; they were able to put our class material into perspective for me.

I think IST, SRA, and Penn State students who took this class are going to be well suited for addressing issues arising the integration of technologies into crisis response, simply because the class now has a heads up on crisis management and disaster response. Through guest speakers and the assigned reading we now have a vast knowledge of what technologies have worked in the past and was technologies are possibly needed in the future for crisis responses. Our guest speakers have us a first-hand look at what goes on in disaster responses and what could use improvement. So, by taking this class I definitely think the class is ready to address issues with integrating technologies into crisis response.

Inspired Blog #5

My fifth inspired blog was inspired over Thanksgiving break when while talking to some family members about social media and how they use twitter and Facebook to find the best deals. I also found out about cyber Monday over Thanksgiving break which I also decided to blog about.

I talked with friends and family who are crazy about black Friday shopping. They said they used twitter and Facebook to find some of the best deals. On, Twitter they would fallow major retail stores to see what adds they post or what deals they tweeted. On Facebook, they mostly conversed with their Facebook “friends” about where the best deals were and what time. I saw an article about Cyber Monday, Black Friday and what to fallow on twitter. Retailers are using social media now more than they ever have before to advertise and attract their customers. This is can be good for the consumers in many ways. Most people are too busy on their phones or computers to look through newspapers or to even take time to browse through major retailer’s websites. So, the major decided that the simplest way to send get to their customers was to use a Twitter account and advertise their black Friday deals through random tweets during Thanksgiving. Amazon was one of the retailers who took to Twitter on Black Friday. TJ Max was another, not only did TJ Max Tweet about their black Friday deals, but the tweeted a “style alerts” which I’m assuming is some tactic of advertising a specific type of style they are trying to trend. I was surprised to see HomeDepot as one of the major retailer on use Twitter, I was also surprised that they had black Friday deals. And, of course there were other major retailers like Wal-Mart, JC Penny, and Sears using social media to advertise their black Friday deals.

This Thanksgiving I found out about Cyber Monday” which is guess is the Monday that immediately fallows black Friday. It was created in 2005 by companies who wanted to persuade people to shop online. I feel like it should be called “identity theft Monday” instead. I feel like Cyber Monday is the perfect opportunities for thieves and hackers to take advantage of online shoppers. I read that about 40 percent of holiday purchases will be made online this year. The Federal Trade Commission reported that last year more than 250,000 people filed complaints about identity theft last year. I wasn’t surprised by this number; I actually thought it would be much higher. Anyhow, I think cyber Monday is a cool idea for good deals, but I would be careful putting sensitive information online.

Assigned Blog #11

For Mondays class we had Dr. Anthony Robinson from the GeoVISTA come over a talk to our class about mapping technologies and some technologies he has been working on over in the geography lab. The title of his presentation was ; Understanding the geography of crisis informatics through social media.

GeoVista center is a department of Geography at Penn State. He covered many topics but I was specifically interested in the picture of the Red Cross members viewing a map hung on a wall and posting information on it with post-it notes. I also took interest in some of the statistics he had about social media and twitter. The senceplace2 was also interesting, so I decided to blog about all three of these topics.

He mentioned there are thousands of different people who want to see a thousand different maps. On those maps, they want to see a thousand different symbols on the map. So it become very difficult to make everyone happy and provide them with the map and information they are specifically looking for.

HE then went into maps for situational awareness, and how out dated the mapping system currently is. His slide showed a picture of Red Cross first responders looking at a paper map on the wall. The map was loaded with numerous posted notes. Mapping and sharing information with a map on the wall pinned with sticky notes undoubtedly come with many flaws. Once a map fills with post-notes and other information, the maps comes down and is replaced with a new map. Tons of information can be lost in this process. Dr. Robinson also said, How can you share information like this? You can give a twelve by eight map with post-it notes to first responders to take out into the field. So clearly a new mapping system to help share information is needed. But one problem I thought of is; if there is new mapping systems developed to allow information to be shared easily, how do you get the humanitarian organization to share information with each other?

He then went into how emergency management professionals use social media and how they use it. 60% used messing to communicate with other professionals.  I was surprised twitter didn’t have the top percentage for emergency management professionals for communicating with each other. On the very next slide it showed a graph that depicted the utility of microblogging tools for emergency tasks. B y microblogging he meant twitter, he said he boss wouldn’t allow him to say twitter for some reason. Anyhow, twitter was most used to disseminating information to the public. This didn’t surprise me at all, after all, we learned in class from student presentations and the class reading that public communicates via twitter about geo-locations and situational awareness s prior to, during and after disasters.

Senseplace2 Geovisualization-  is a technology he is working on in the GeoVISTA lab. It basically collects tweets by searching for specific words and maps it out via the location of the tweet. They designed it to crawl Tweets and store all the related information into a database using predefined keywords. They analyze the tweets to identify geographic information like the location, the time zones, and the GPS coordinating. Deterring the location of the tweet is difficult because only a small percent of people tweet their locations, and when they do, it’s usually only the city. The GPS locations are usually easy to determine because people often don’t disable the GPS location on their phones. He then brought up a good point about phones and the GPS locations. He thinks emergency personnel should legally be able to see your GPS location when tweeting about disasters or when making emergency calls. He said this is important to know if the person tweeting was actually around the disaster. So, do you think there should be a law passed that allows emergency responder to be able to see your GPS location if they ever needed to find you in an emergency or disaster?

Assigned Blog #10

This week’s class began with a tutorial of the extreme events lab. The room’s set up was interesting, with all the screens to monitor current events. They brought down a big screen which they referred to as the “cave.” The 3D presentation was interesting, but I feel like the 3D technology was a little out of date. All though whoever was presenting said the 3D software was handed down probably because it was outdated. I’m still a little curious on how the 3D data is easier to understand than regular 2D. He showed us a 3D graph with data of time-lined events. The professor also said something about how they have an eight speaker sound system and will listen to music. They will use a certain tone or instrument alert them when an event or situation takes place.

This week in class we discussed using twitter in during a disaster or crisis. There were a lot of statics in the readings and in the student’s presentations. Most of the papers we read and student’s presentation debated whether or not social media networks should be used for disaster relief. For what I understood about the readings, I’m think social media networks should be used for situational updates and geo-location during disasters. I’m not so sure the humanitarian organization should be using social media networks as reliable information. I feel like it is too difficult for responders to confirm whether or not the information is true or not. I think social media networks can be within a community to warn each other about the disaster. They could simply share information about evacuation, locations or emergency centers, shelters, fire/hazard lines.

Another issue with using twitter in a disaster situation is that twitter only allows up to 140 characters. It would be difficult (for me at least) to be able cram enough useful information into 140 characters. The author of one of the articles referred to tweets like this a high-yield tweet. The article went on about looking for “high-yield” twitterers who were able to cram useful and understandable information on twitter in 140 characters.

I also think social media networks can be used in situations like the Virginia Tech shooting, Northern Illinois shooting, and California Wild-fires.  There was a study on social media, like facebook, during these disasters. Most of the people found out about the disasters or situations through social media way before official notification or communication came out through authorities. A watched a documentary that interviewed students who were on campus during the Virginia Tech shootings. Most of the students found out about a gunman on campus through facebook or text messages. They were able to safely run off campus escaping any injury. There was no official way for the authorities to warn the students about the gunman on campus. So, I definitely think social media does have its place in disasters, one way or another. 

Assigned Blog #9

Using Social Media for Disaster Releif?

Here is a video of a Australian News group reporting about people turning to social media for help during disasters.  

In the article The Effects of Social Media on The Disaster Relief Effort Fallowing The March 11 Earthquake in Japan, it was said that 70% of the earthquakes responder’s used Twitter, 38% used Facebook and 16% used Youtube. A research done by Beat Communication (the largest social networking packages in Japan) on communication before and after the earthquake noted that; people used a social network to compensate for the lack of information in television and newspaper. The people of Japan used social media to get information from foreign media due to the lack of media they were receiving from local news. They also, and probably most importantly, used social networks to ensure the safety of friends and families. Graphs show that Twitter was the most widely used network after the earthquake, in fact there was an increase in the use of Twitter after the earthquake from 56% to 71%. After reading this article it seem pretty evident that there is a use for social media. I think social media, like Twitter, can be very useful during disaster situations. But after reading Twitter for Crises Communication: Lessons learned From Japan’s Tsunami Disaster, I’m not sure that I’m sold on the fact that humanitarian organizations or responders should rely on information feeding from Twitter or other social media networks. The article said Twitter had been recently used to share information like; the shooting of police officers, rivers flooding, and wild grass fires. These types of situations are reliable and useful information that could be used to warn people. There are also situations where people are Tweeting false information, and this is why I’m not sure organizations or responders should rely on Twitter during disaster response efforts.

A graph of Tweets during an earthquake in SF

In a study done by a Chinese microblogging  site Sina-Weibo after the 2010 Yushu earthquake, it classified the tweets into five different groups; (1) opinion related, (2) emotion-related, (3) action-related, (4) general earthquake related, (5) situation related. The action-related, general-earthquake related, and situation related can be useful, but if organizations and responders base their decisions or reactions off of people’s opinions and emotions, then the organizations and responders might run into trouble. Like we have talked about in class numerous of times, people might not be so truthful about Tweeting for help if their emotions are involved. People could Tweet about one of their family members is trapped under some ruble, even though they aren’t 100 percent sure there actually is a family member trapped. So, if a responder goes to help this person crying out for help, only to find out a family member wasn’t trapped under the ruble, then they have wasted valuable time that could have been used to help someone else. The article also mentions that one of their biggest concerns about relying on Twitter was that people Tweet false information and it’s had to verify information.

So, do I think social media networks like Twitter should be used by responders during disasters? To an extent they should, but they should NOT rely on the information. I do think social media networks are good for Tweeting information to warn people. Like in the case of the Virginia Tech shootings, a huge percent of the students said they were notified about a shooter on the campus and were able to evacuate in time because of cell phones. Also, people of Japan used social media to update themselves on information after the earthquake of Japan. So, I think social media could be used in situations like these to save lives, but I don’t truly believe they should be relied on by disaster response organizations because people could be tweeting false information.

Assigned Blog #8

This week’s speaker presented to the class via Skype. Patrick Meier is one of the creators of crisis mapping Ushahidi. He also has quit the background including; co-director of Harvard University’s Crisis Mapping and Early Warning Program and thought leader for technologies for crisis and early warning. He is also very educated with a Phd from The Fletcher School, a MA from Columbia University, and is an accomplished author. His theme today was- saving the world one map at a time. 

He started the presentation off by talking about what the crises mapping was like over 100 years ago. They had carries on motor bikes to share information with each other. Radios were much too large to carry around, which is why they had to resort to messengers on battle fields and while responding to disasters or whatever they called disaster response over 100 years ago. He said to best understand today’s mapping technologies we should understand what mapping was like years ago.

Like I said in recent blogs; I can’t believe Ushahidi was developed by a bunch of Pat’s friends in his living room in Boston. When the earthquake struck Haiti, half of Haiti was missing on Google maps. He was able to us crowd source and create the rest of the missing map. He showed us a sweet video to better understand how hundreds of volunteers were able to use satellite imagery to create a detailed open street map of Port of Prince.

He and his friend from Stanford were able to create Mission 4636. They were able to receive thousands of texts pleading for help. A big problem was that a majority of the texts were coming in Haitian Creel. Luckily Pat’s friend was able to gather hundreds of volunteers to translate the messages. There were so many people willing to volunteer their time to translate messages; they were able to translated about 80,000 texts messages. They became so efficient at translating; the turnaround time for each text message was around ten minutes.

Mr. Meier said we could have all the technologies in the world, but without the trained volunteers, none of it would exist. A big part of what he does requires a lot of volunteer help. He also mentioned the stand by task force group and how much of a help they are, and how they train the volunteers to use certain technologies used in disaster responses.   

He also shared this quote with us, I thought it was relevant to the project he created Ushahidi. -

“Having a real time- map, complete with satellite photos, if where everyone at any one moment is almost as good as having your own helicopter”

His question to us was; can there be a technology where multiple people affected or witnessing a disaster are able to share information with others via cell phone, video, or pictures. I also if people around here would volunteer their time much like the volunteers of Ushahidi did, if a disaster struck around here.

Inspired Blog #4

I recently read the article that Dr. Tapia sent to use about the Taliban use Twitter. I wasn’t surprised at all that the Taliban has resorted to using Twitter as source of communication. Think about it, millions of people use the social media network and I am sure it is a very difficult talk to track specific tweets. The opening statement was “Bits of Information- not just bullets and bombs- are in the thick of fighting in Afghanistan.” Basically I think this means that not only are we fighting against weapons but also information.

                At some point the United States forces (probably the CIA) has begun to think that they were losing the informational war on terrorism against the Taliban in Afghanistan. They were able to regroup and fight back with Twitter by “using those brisk 140-character messages to get out the other side of the story.” I guess they were able to resort to twitter and track Taliban members along with other useful information to gain an upper hand in the war on terrorism. A Lieutenant Colonel had said that the Taliban has starting putting out false information, probably to mislead the United States. He said eventually they had to stop fallowing every lead they got until they knew for sure that it was true or they had resources to back it up. The Lieutenant said they now use social media to find information because it is quick and cheap. I am not exactly sure that I would use twitter or any other social media network has a reliable source of information though, couldn’t the Taliban tweet false information to mislead their followers?

                The answer is actually easy, in the case the United States Forces isn’t using Twitter to peruse the enemy. We are simply correcting their false tweets. Here is was is going on; there are several followers to a Taliban tweet group. And this group, for whatever reason, will tweet false information, like they just “shot down an American Helo.” When in fact they never did shoot down a helicopter, so this group from the United States then verifies the information and tweets back saying something like “we have no missing helicopters or reports of down helicopters. There is a group from the public affair office that monitors the Taliban tweets all day so they can respond to any false information that is tweeted.

                After reading this article part of me thinks it is a little ridiculous to pay a bunch of people to sit in a room so they can monitor and respond to false information the Taliban is tweeting. But then the other side of me thinks that the United States isn’t just monitoring this information so we can correct it, but because we can use the location of the tweets or use some of the information to track certain terrorist or wanted individuals.

                It won’t surprise me to see terrorist use social media networks more in the future now that cell phones and internet is more readily available to them. I think it would be a dumb move on their part to start using more social media networks, making it easier for the United States to fallow them and ultimately capturing them.