What does it mean when your locals emergency managers avoid socialmedia- UPDATED

I have continued to look into how my local government is responding to this urgent issue.  I would like everyone to know that I have since learned that it is not the agency that is unwilling to respond it's our elected officials. Specifically Phil Mendelson the Council member in charge of the Nation's Capitol city Public Safety Committee.

I really hit home for me after a recent spate of natural disasters and the Council member  was quoted in the press saying: "Cell phone are useless in emergencies."    This shows me that will the sweeping changes that have already happen in public safety --the public leadership in my District need to change.

I would also like to apologize  to the folks in the District's agency's that are trying to do the public's work while our leadership fails to understand the changes that have already happened.

In the Nation's capital the last two days we have



had several of our Public Schools targeted with a campaign to send some kind of white substance in letters to them.

During all of this the local emergency agencies not only failed to address it the media and various social media citizens took it upon themselves to fill in the gap.

So citizens are left with offical Gov agencies that aren't the Emergency Managmement office giving out info like this

and again DC' Emergency Managment Agency

And Citizens with their own alerts

This is just un acceptable in the Nation's Capitol

Data is Oil: Hot Data

Data is Oil: Hot Data: "I remember being part of Digital Computer Corp's 64 bit forum. Yes this does date me and it benchmarks for me the reality from the rhetoric ..."

IMHO all of crisis data is hot data.......we need to think about this and how we are going to be dealing with not just cloud interoperability how about what's next?

How, who or what do we train folks in CrisisData is backwards.

"At certain points in the cycle technology becomes inverted. Applications play second fiddle to frameworks until the frameworks no longer look and work as well as the new fine tuned applications. In the Ambient Cloud applications always play first violin because it's only the application that can carry out their objectives while tracking the ever changing generations of technologies and services.
Applications can't wait for standards bodies. Opportunity barely knocks at all, but it certainly hardly every knocks twice. If Facebook games are the new hotness then make that happen. If Facebook is old hat and iPhone social games are the new hotness then jump on that. It's the application's job to make the user not care how it's done. For this reason the dream of utility computing may never be fully achieved. The wide variety of different clouds and different compute resources will make it difficult to come up with a true standardization layer."  High Scalability Blog

This seems to me that this is the same conversation that we are having in the #smem, #certsmem #CrisisData world about setting standards for social media in emergency management.

I think that author Todd Hoff really broke down our issue as to what and where we need to focus our attention upon considering all of the this emerging crisis data came about without any input from the Emergency Management field.  EM's are the last players to the game.

So let's just adapt and move onwards. Because in the end it trains us and we have to keep adapting. IMHO The rest of the paper should be an eye opener for many if they haven't gotten too deep into Big Data.    

Considering Data is the New Oil, I think you will sooner then you think.

We need an Public Safety Cloud NOW.

One only has to go take a look at the after effects of the 4 major disasters that Japan suffered

1. Earth Quake

2. Tsunami

3. Volcano

4. Nuclear incident

To start thinking what if's!

Japan Tsunami, Before & After: Zoomable Satellite Images

With all of this in under 2 days, in this short window of time,  engulfing such a wide spread geographic area ~We now know having your communications, networks and systems tied to one area is not a good plan.  Anyone of these events are going to have an impact on the ability of emergency managers, CrisisData and SocialMediaCitizens to coordinate any response. 

So what happens when for any reason the locals are not able to get to on their own network and access applications or communication systems? What happens when a plumb of radiation or a tsunami comes rolling along and blankets the EOC. Or electric remains off so long that backup generators start to fail.

Just looking at the pictures of Japan over the last few days shows that whole areas of a city can be rendered too hazards to enter ~ within minutes. 

Well!  If they are running a hybrid-cloud -while key element of their operations could still be in-house, behind their firewall Sure it's important to be on isolated systems;  However, that means they're vulnerable and need to have off site capabilities. However they have the ability with the cloud to access Software, Infastructure and Platforms on demand, without needing to call up tech support and it is all scalable beyond anything old computer networks storage systems can handle.

Again, in light of what we are seeing unfold in Japan this clearly demonstrates that the ability to port back and forth from the Cloud needs to become operational directive #1.  There is no other option that begins to address the need, issues and situation that we face today!

With most of the major computer companies moving into a cloud model and many of the biggest private & pubic companies following suit it stands to reason that emergency management operations need to do the same.

I firmly believe that as matter of the Public' SAFETY that Cloud providers and local, state and federal emergency management agencies need to come together, design and build-out the Public Safety Cloud. This would enable every EMA large & small in the US and partners overseas the ability to backup, operate and share data. Let alone operate when they town is wiped off the grid or map.

This would be a hybrid environment and take advantage of the infrastructure that is being developed for commerce to help with All Hazards and it would be provided for free  by every Cloud provider that uses our domestic public safety services to operate and even market their services as being secure facilities.  IMHO They are because the public nature of emergency response. 

It's a win | win (meaning public and emergency responders win) besides we really don't have any other option. Plus the smarter cloud companies one will start to market how they help the public~ As Public Good is Good Business. 

Look forward to hearing what others think.

Nelson (at) Hastatus.com

HP is offering a solution for the transition Hybrids.......

Cloud: HP plans to build a full cloud stack and help transition customers to hybrid cloud environments. HP intends to leverage its scale, reliability and security in its current hardware, software and services offerings. HP also plans to grow its higher-value services that offer greater strategic value.
Apotheker today unveiled the company’s plans to build an open applications marketplace that integrates consumer, enterprise and developer services. The platform will support multiple languages and will be open to third-parties. HP will vet applications for security and interoperability to facilitate an environment that is both trusted and open. A device-aware HP cloud will configure and send the appropriate services to the device that the customer is using, and connected devices will intuitively access services the customer needs.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110314xa.html

This is the first of their three strategic areas. 

Ok I surrender the jump to the cloud won't happen for most so....

We are going to have to come to term with Hybrid environments. This will be the combination of cloud and priviate in-house networks with their legacy applications or security requirements.  This is going to call for a whole new level of enterprise architecture, management and service.

Right now we have mostly two camps those doing everything on the cloud or those doing nothing.  Sure there are a couple of companies and ? agencies that are running Hybrid environments they just aren't talking.

So we better start~because the socmed tsunami is not an threat it's just a when.

Who's Cloud are you on?

"Within an hour, more than 1,200 tweets a minute were coming from Tokyo. By the end of Friday, American time, a total of 246,075 Twitter posts using the term "earthquake" had been posted."
Telegraph.co.uk




This number is staggering and it suggest a socmedia tsunami is heading to your EOC sometime soon.


This brings up a number of issues that are going to need to be adressed and I hope to see the folks in CrisisMedia and SMEM start to talk about them.  Namely Bandwidth and Who's Cloud are you on.  There is no way any single EOC computer system can handle this demand load. Right now we need to be developing a frame work of how to get some of the biggest EMA down to the smallest on to a secure cloud.   


I will not be surprised in the after action reports to see that most of the Japan's local emergency management IT network was unable to stay online or handle the load.  There is only one scalable on demand solutions that is available without going to customer supports and that exist on the cloud.


I think it is incumbent upon those of us in the CrisisData world to push this issues.   And here is the 1 fact you need to know to support this statement of mine. 100 percent of social media is on the CLOUD.

Welcome to our blog about Crisis Data.

As we migrate from our analog world to this new digital dimension the rise of the Social Media Citizens naturally turned them into Digital Crisis Responders as well as consumers.

Since we have government and entertainment industry clients @HastatusLLC  We can say that @govs are way ahead. It's our experience from working in emergency response as both consultants to government and as member/trainer in our local CERT program that the front line of interaction with citizens in extreme times make this the case.


Sure it's an emergency and nothing creates change like them right ~ So agencies, responders, and social media citizens are adopting to these new connections FIRST.  Since they encounter them head on with every hazard, every day responders have no shortage of incoming request for aid, information and services.  Mean while in the non emergency world a popular expression is being posted on socialmedia and sums up their opposite problem.

"Marketing is for companies that don't have advocates"

Since entertainment and marketing in general has this opposite problem in that they to create a "need".  Mother nature and man creates needs some times multi- needs in the same day for responders.  All of which the citizens expect that responders and their agencies will adopt to these changes at the speed and agility of the marketeers are displaying as they work on ways to get folks to visit their social media offerings.


So this all sets consumer expectation very high and their views moves now at the speed of thought to blogs, facebook or tweets and it will be a must for every type of agency/responder to be there now, and also be on the lookout for new channels from the citizens as this too will happen and to of course deal with the crisis data as a whole.

We'll use this blog to talk about this new world of Crisis Data and how it will work on the cloud that has formed to support all of this and what it means to each of us on a number of issues.