Leveraging Social Media and Crowdsourcing in Disaster Management Processes in Europe
It is important to note that multiple partners have contributed to the creation of the presented results throughout the project. This report contributes to enhancing the understanding of how social media and crowdsourcing are applied in European disaster risk management processes. Furthermore, it identifies the limits, potentials, and areas for improvement in the utilisation of these tools and technologies in disaster risk management. The dissemination of these findings aims to support organisations working in disaster risk management at both national and international levels.
From the report's executive summary:
In a changing technological landscape to address disasters, and with increasing diversity of stakeholders in disaster risk management, we need to develop new pathways of using social media and crowdsourcing more effectively. Going forward, there is a need to deepen our understanding on the role of social media and crowdsourcing in disasters in various socio-political contexts and the intra-organisational dynamics. Further, there is a need to focus on more people-centred social media and crowdsourcing research; and a strong need to fill the gaps on ethics, privacy and normative issues; and efforts must focus on all aspects of disaster risk management.
The following questions are addressed in the report:
- How are European disaster management organisations applying social media and crowdsourcing in disaster management processes?
- What are the limits and potentials of this application associated with institutional resilience?
- Following the first two questions, how can the application of social media and crowdsourcing in disaster management processes be further strengthened?
The report is based on findings from four different European countries: Denmark, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. The empirical research has centred around five hazard-specific cases: Flooding (Copenhagen region, Denmark); Earthquake (Province of Terni, Italy), Terrorism and Drought (Germany) and industrial hazards (South Limburg, The Netherlands).
We suggest a turn towards placing people and power at the heart of questions of social media and crowdsourcing technologies. Instead of ‘just’ placing social media and crowdsourcing in the centre of our attention, we should focus on the power shifts that these technologies produce, the contexts in which they are supposed to be applied, as well as on the social and cultural condition that coproduce the outcomes of social media and crowdsourcing in disaster risk management processes. Understanding resilience as the capacity to respond to absorb disasters as well as the capacity to formulate alternative pathways moving forward, the varying capacities to reduce and deal with risk are conditioned by decisions taken across all aspects of disaster risk management. As such, we need to turn our attention to long-term recovery and prevention of disaster risk creation to get the full picture.
We present three main recommendations to address the challenges highlighted:
Recommendation I: Increase formalisation of social media and crowdsourcing in the organisation.
Recommendation II: Allocate resources to social media and crowdsourcing activities.
Recommendation III: Diversify and target communication.
To support organisations in strengthening the application of social media and crowdsourcing in disaster risk management processes, the LINKS project has developed a range of resources integrated into an online platform, the LINKS Community Center[1]. In this report, we highlight three of these resources:
- The Social Media and Crowdsourcing Guidelines Library provides a comprehensive overview of and navigation system to relevant guidelines, standard operating procedures and legal frameworks for applying social media and crowdsourcing in disasters;
- The Including Citizens Handbook presents a set of learning modules for organisations wanting to consider citizens in their disaster management processes. This includes questions related to unaffiliated volunteers, targeted communication and awareness, accessibility and mobilisation of citizens;
- The Resilience Wheel serves as a practical tool through which organisations can discuss and assess current and future uses of social media and crowdsourcing within their organisation and across organisations.
It is important to note that multiple partners have contributed to the creation of the presented results throughout the project. This report contributes to enhancing the understanding of how social media and crowdsourcing are applied in European disaster risk management processes. Furthermore, it identifies the limits, potentials, and areas for improvement in the utilisation of these tools and technologies in disaster risk management. The dissemination of these findings aims to support organisations working in disaster risk management at both national and international levels.
[1] LINKS Community Center: https://links.communitycenter.eu/index.php/Welcome!
| Download the report here: Leveraging Social Media and Crowdsourcing in Disaster Management Processes in Europe |
| LINKS website: http://www.links-project.eu/ |