One of the most fascinating use of social networks and mobile technologies for emergency management is crisis mapping. It's the crowdsourced geo-localization of all sorts of social media data (tweets, Facebook posts, pictures, videos + SMS and others) whch are shared by people witnessing or experiencing a crisis ... others then take the info and offer a dynamic visualization of all that data in the form of a map. Although it can often take other forms (database, wiki), the map provides immediate enhanced situational awareness for emergency managers.

Last Friday, I was part of a group of Canadian and international "champions" of the use of these emerging technologies in emergency management, who met with officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in Ottawa. We gave the federal civil servants gathered in a room at the Lester B. Pearson Building in Ottawa, an outlook on how crowdsourcing, crisis mapping and social media could help their deicision-making process. For more, on the meeting, see my blog post.

I believe it shows great maturity for DFAIT to hear what volunteers have to say and offer. With social media and mobile devices, the two pillars for the "age of social convergence", emergency managers must now move at the speed of their audiences AND use the tools they use ... or face irrelevance. I believe there are a few key trends that will help governments and emergency management organizations accept the reality of citizen participation brought by new technologies:

• the future of the democratic process is intimately linked with digital literacy and engagement by the electorate ... and this applies to the realm of emergency management and disaster response. The number of seats at the EM table has increased over the last couple of decades: from first responders and governments, to the addition of private sector organizations, NGOs and now citizens themselves (and volunteer groups) who no longer simply want to be victims or witnesses but want to take part in response and recovery efforts ... which actually also enhances collective preparedness.
• social media, community involvement through the use of emerging technology, and the growing saturation of the use of mobile devices by the general public all lead to increased resilience during disasters. It's been proven many times now: in New Zealand, Australia, Japan and in the US, when other channels fail, social networks are often the only communications means available ... even when cell phone lines are saturated or down.
• our audiences expect governments to use social networks and mobile technologies to communicate with them during a crisis. Twitter, Facebook and other social networks offer built-in resilience and redundancy to convey effective emergency information messaging. The American Red Cross survey on social media in disasters clearly lays out where the future lies ...
• Finally, in an era of fiscal constraint, the use of crowdsourcing and crisis mapping ... is a powerful "force multiplier" ... by adding to the evidence-based decision making tools available to government and agencies, new technologies allow whatever resources are available to be used/applied much more strategically because the decision is based on info coming from people on the ground ... who share what their needs are ... often at the hyper-local level ... social networks allow that info to come to the fore: