Leveraging social networks to sound the alarm

Aviv Siegel

The proliferation of social networks has revolutionized how people communicate. Today, people are connecting with voice, data and video across the world in seconds. Because millions of people currently use social networking sites, bulletin boards, video-sharing sites, podcasts and blogs, a great opportunity exists to leverage these channels for mass alerting during an emergency.

To exploit these new Web technologies, enterprise-class network-centric architecture takes an innovative approach that exploits the power and reach of computer networks and the Internet to deliver emergency alerting capabilities well beyond those of traditional systems. The Internet lets emergency managers send emergency alerts via “IP aware media gateways,” such as Web sites (commercial, public and government), social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace) and other non-traditional channels, opening another avenue for network-centric emergency alerting.

It is important to incorporate social networks as a channel for emergency networks due to the support of these large-scale networks and their reach to millions of people. Additionally, social networks add another layer of redundancy, as many times wireless and telecom networks become clogged with traffic in emergencies and can even experience outages due to damage from the emergency. The incident at Fort Hood in November 2009 serves as an example of where social networks were used to update personnel on the shootings and status on the base.

Because multiple and redundant alerting channels ensure maximum reach in the event of an emergency, alerting via Web-based exchanges allows social networks users to receive critical alerts from their trusted organizations. Additionally, the end-user’s organization can have a consistent message sent through a direct personal channel (i.e. phone, text messaging or desktop notification) as well as via social networks messaging, covering users who are traditionally on the boundaries of the organizations’ typical users -- for example, families and dependants of military personnel -- these users are not directly targeted by the traditional mass notification systems. Leveraging social networks can address these audiences in a consistent and trusted manner.

By communicating via the Internet, public safety and security officials can send alerts to affected communities. They also can provide links to sites that are delivering critical information and updates on the emergency at-hand in a trusted and consistent manner.

The importance of being able to interoperate with social networks has been recognized. Recently, the after-action report on the shootings at Fort Hood specifically cited the need to exploit social networks for reaching all personnel, including family members and dependents, during an emergency. The presidential report on the response to pandemics also noted the importance of being able to exploit social networks as communications channels when the timely dissemination of information is required. Including these existing channels would add additional value to mass notification systems without added costs.

Systems such as AtHoc IWSAlerts can leverage social networks’ “location aware” capability. By setting a geo-location parameter for emergencies, notifications can be triggered based on an event’s location, such as targeted to those residing in a flood zone. This capability can help affected people to tune to messages relevant to their locale, filtering irrelevant messages.

In addition to alert distribution, the next generation of network-centric mass notification systems can monitor selected social networks feeds to automatically identify events that may impact a specific organization. For example, the local fire department’s Twitter feed or the Centers for Disease Control’s Twitter profile for emergency information. Monitored information like this can be used to automatically trigger alerts to personnel in affected organizations. This increases the speed at which emergencies are identified and alerts are triggered, enabling a faster response from security personnel.

In summary, technology and the Internet have delivered a new cache of communications tools in the hands of emergency managers and public safety officials. These new capabilities will help those charged with safeguarding people, property and infrastructure to access the newest communications channels and alert people about emergencies.