Social Media has proven to be a useful Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as mass and peer-to-peer communication channel before, during and after disasters and emergencies. User generated content provides a broader coverage and more up-to-date information of crisis events than traditional media. Many emergency management agencies are embracing social media as a channel for alerts,...
Social media has become an increasingly important tool for responding organisations to share information with the public. During an emergency, it can be crucial that people in affected areas are able to obtain accurate and timely information. By the same token, responders benefit from being able to gather intelligence from the public, validate, deploy resources as required and disseminate any...
At 22h on August 19th 2017, just after Barcelona & Cambrils attacks, and with the Spanish Vuelta about to start from Nimes (France), media and social networks in Spain began talking about an active shooter situation in the train station of Nimes.
Cpt. Alfonso from SDIS30 (also coordinator of VOST Europe) was on shift in Nimes, and Iratxe Gomez was monitoring the situation from Spain, and we...
A well defined collaboration with emergency response organisations is the key to a successful Virtual Operations Support Team.
The VOST Europe team will present the actual footprint of VOST around the world, provide guidelines for the creation of new teams, give examples of organisation models and collaboration agreements with public authorities in different countries, and discuss some...
The goal of the E2mC H2020 project is to demonstrate feasibility and usefulness of the integration of social media analysis and crowdsourced information within both the Rapid Mapping and Early Warning Components of Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS). In recent years, several operational experiences (large earthquakes such as the one in Central Italy in 2016/2017 or large hurricanes...
After Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas in 2017, FEMA asked VOSG (different teams in the VOST Americas region, coordinated by Americorps for Texas VOAD) to monitor social media inquiries on donations and spontaneous volunteers being collected and arriving in Texas. FEMA also requested simultaneous English/Spanish amplification of official donations/volunteer messages on social media.
This...
The 1st attack happened shortly after 17:00h on the 17th August in Barcelona, and the 2nd around 01:30 on the 18th in Cambrils. VOST Europe volunteers participated from very early on, mainly to support VOSTcat and VOST Spain, but also to amplify key messages (including the ones from foreign offices).
Laurent Alfonso and Iratxe Gomez were active for VOST Europe; Iratxe was also active with her...
This terrible attack happened on the afternoon of April 7th 2017. With no local VOST presence, but with several international VOST teams looking into it, the VOST Europe core team felt the need to amplify and translate key messages into English, French and Spanish.
Incidentally this happened right after the end of the EENA Conference 2017, in which VOST Europe had had a relevant presence. In...
