Written by Chris Diehl
on 

Empowering Citizens

As Hurricane Gustav bears down on Louisiana, I can not help but think about the challenges of disaster response and how I believe we as a nation can do better. I believe communication technology, including social media, has an important role in this equation. Yet the most fundamental shift that is required is one of mindset.

Following September 11th, the push for homeland security has focused significantly on deploying technology to enhance the capabilities of security personnel and first responders to prevent or mitigate the impact of threats to the nation, whether natural or man-made. Within this equation, one hardly hears discussion about the role of the individual citizen. Therefore the model appears to be one that views the citizen more as the victim rather than an enabler.

Consider as an example what transpired between the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Significant investments were made to enhance the physical security around the towers. Yet, as described in Amanda Ripley’s The Unthinkable, there was significant disarray during the 2001 evacuation due to simple lack of knowledge and preparedness. No full-scale evacuation drills had been conducted in the towers since the 1993 attack. Many had never taken the stairs in the towers and had no idea where the staircases were. The organizational strategy that had been discussed for such events had not been seriously rehearsed. It assumed that centralized communication with first responders would be in place to coordinate and guide the effort. When this model was put to the test, it broke down and resulted in loss of life.

Empowering individuals with information so they can act, either individually or collectively, to survive is key. It is a mindset that we must emphasize and support through social and technological means.

Dr. Stephen Flynn, Commander, USCG (Retired) is a leading expert on homeland security at the Council of Foreign Relations and a staunch advocate of this mindset. The example he points to about the impact of empowering individuals is Flight 93. In this scenario, the passengers on that aircraft obtained information about the nature of the situation, deliberated their options and took action. They undoubtedly saved additional lives through their actions and mitigated the threat before government officials were faced with far more difficult choices.

Empowering individuals with information can have significant effect in larger scale disasters as well. If we consider our citizens as potential actors in the equation, actors that may be the first responders when the professionals are unavailable, then we need to think differently about our priorities and needs. Communication infrastructure is key. We must be able to rapidly deploy infrastructure that can reestablish a communication network within the affected region. We also need to think about how individuals will access that network when power may be limited to nonexistent.

Once the network is operational, there needs to be communication capabilities in place that support emergent collaboration. Current social media tools provide capabilities that can help and hint at elements that are needed. One important capability that I believe is absolutely essential is for citizens to have some mechanism to easily integrate their collective observations into an overall picture of the state of the environment. Without the input of the citizens, it may be difficult to impossible to produce equivalent situational awareness through other means. (Consider the aggregation of information on the San Diego fires via Google Maps as a recent example.) The citizens form a distributed sensor network of mass proportion, provided they can communicate and share state with others. With a view of the global state, the citizens themselves can then start to make better decisions and assess the impact of their actions on the global state.

Moving beyond simple aggregation of state, the next step may be to provide mechanisms for individuals to coordinate locally and report their actions and intent. In such dynamic and fluid events, having the tools to enable emergent collaboration and action could be a significant force-multiplier in time of need. Here the simple act of reporting actions could help better apply the resources available through the social network that is the community. I imagine significant questions loom here about how and what to share and how that ultimately supports emergent collaboration. All interesting dimensions for future research.

I hope that in time we will shift our mindset on the role of the citizen and begin evolving our technology to support the paradigm of emergent collaboration. It must be a socio-technical evolution. The past is rife with examples illustrating that technology alone is not the answer. It can often be the easiest part of the equation to handle.

UPDATE: Here are some interesting links related to the post.

InSTEDD - “An innovation lab for technologies designed to improve community resilience and save lives through early disease detection and rapid disaster response.”

Strong Angel - A serious of demonstrations exploring ways for improved civilian-military cooperation in disaster scenarios.

Strong Angel III Interim Working Report - Covering lessons learned from the most recent report.