Social media in a disaster

November 4, 2012

My thanks have to go to Steven Clift for circulating the following links regarding the use of social media in a disaster situation and we are all aware of what the USA has had to go through recently:

First of all some lessons learned from the Joplin tornado – http://extension.missouri.edu/greene/documents/PlansReports/using%20social%20media%20in%20disasters.pdf

There was already Steven’s article – http://bitly.com/localrecovery – about creating micro online groups for more informal ongoing exchange as emergency response moves into recovery.

From Christchurch NZ comes a multi-agency meta site – http://canterburyearthquake.org.nz

As the globe warms and water levels and weather changes, these experiences need to be shared.

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E-government disaster

October 13, 2012

When developing plans in the event of an IT disaster one of the many aspects that needs to be covered is the situation when the web site itself or the  applications feeding into it go down. One can have all sorts of contingencies around web services including muliple servers, resilient Internet feeds, backup power sources etc but what about that one day when it’s all under water or hit by space debris?

A cheap and dirty, but very good solution is demonstrated by the city of Naperville near Chicago, USA, where they have established an emergency page, as described in their local online journal – Positively Naperville. Now I may be teaching all you IT and Web Managers out there to suck eggs but do you have such a thing ready for a nasty disaster. A quick and temporary pointer change and your citizens will know which number to ring or where to visit if your main site goes down – just remember to maintain it, too.

The trouble with all this wizzy IT equipment is that without spending an awful lot more cash upon it one is open to all sorts of potential issues, and what can go wrong will go wrong and at a time when you least want it. Prepare for the unexpected – it’s inneviatble at some time.

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