NFPA Journal - July/August 2019 - 67

support the same type of information
product remotely to the public as they
needed it," Graham said. "We immediately saw the need to assist individuals
who were calling for help, who were
stuck under the rubble, or looking for
loved ones."
Where a VOST acts like a volunteer
arm of the official incident command's
office, Humanity Road and other private groups work in partnership with
an array of responder and aid organizations. The groups deploy hundreds
of volunteers worldwide to monitor
online communication, and look for
specific opportunities to connect the
dots between victims who need assistance and those on the ground who can
provide it, in whatever capacity that
may take.
For instance, in 2017, during a
large fire in Texas, Humanity Road
volunteers noticed a Facebook page
where discussions were underway to
help resolve a severe food shortage
for the livestock in the affected area.
Out-of-state charities had pledged to
provide hay, and truckers chimed in to
say that they were willing to haul it.
But there was a key problem with the
plan. "The truckers were saying, 'Well,
I can bring the hay, but I can only do
it once because it's so expensive to
run the trucks down and back,'" said
Graham, who is now Humanity Road's
chief operations manager. Humanity
Road contacted the truckers through
Facebook and provided them with
fuel vouchers to help offset the cost of
getting hay to the hungry animals. The
organization sets aside funds to occasionally make small, targeted direct
aid if a situation calls for it.
"Every disaster is different and every
disaster is local, so we look at what the
local needs are" in any given situation,
Graham said, adding that such a targeted, timely response would have been
almost impossible before social media.
"When it comes to disaster response,
it's in the public's best interest to help
each other. Historically, it has been
neighbors helping neighbors. In this
digital age, your neighbor may be right
next door or they might be a thousand
miles away. The digital connection that
we all have makes all of us neighbors."

Over the years, the sophistication
and capabilities of these volunteer
monitoring groups have increased,
along with their impact. When Hurricane Harvey struck Houston in 2018,
Humanity Road deployed its volunteers
to monitor social media sites to look
for pleas for help from trapped flood
victims. Within hours, the organization had documented distress posts
on Facebook and Twitter from about
1,000 separate locations in Houston,
and overlaid these distress points on
a detailed map. The group shared the
map with the US Coast Guard, which

IN THIS DIGITAL
AGE, YOUR
NEIGHBOR MAY
BE RIGHT NEXT
DOOR OR THEY
MIGHT BE A
THOUSAND
MILES AWAY.

prompted the military branch to reconfigure its resources and deployment
strategy. "They had no idea of the size
of the event until they got our map,"
Graham said. "And from that map they
were able to rescue 5,000 people from
those 1,000 points of distress."
Humanity Road isn't the only nonprofit that's turning public chatter into
robust information tools. A group called
Standby Task Force, also founded in 2010,
uses its worldwide network of trained
social monitoring volunteers to put
together a variety of interactive digital
content for responding agencies trying
to manage crisis situations. This includes
"crisis maps," which are online interactive maps overlaid with data points that,
when clicked, display everything from on
the ground images of damage, such as
an impassible road, to requests for help,
and any other key information relevant

to the humanitarian response, almost all
sourced from social media. According to
standbytaskforce.org, its volunteers can
produce and update these maps in "very
close to real time."
In addition, Standby Task Force
volunteers can conduct remote assessments of local terrain and damage
by searching satellite imagery and by
working with partners on the ground
using drones to capture aerial footage.
The group also offers agencies what
it calls "rapid 3W reporting," a report
detailing which agencies are responding to a disaster, what they will be
doing, and where they will be going, so
that aid teams can efficiently use their
resources for maximum impact and
eliminate redundancy. Standby Task
Force produces these reports using
"statements these agencies make on
their own websites and social media
feeds," according to its website.
Increasingly, social media platforms
themselves have also created new features to assist emergency efforts. In 2017,
Facebook launched a disaster mapping
initiative, which uses the global information services data generated by users
checking into the app. The data is aggregated to provide real-time visual insights
about where people are moving, population density changes, and the location
and number of people that have identified themselves as safe within the app.
Like the maps produced by Humanity
Road, Standby Task Force, and others,
these tools give responders and aid
agencies valuable insight to maximize
their efforts.
With disasters increasing in frequency and severity worldwide, and
resources to deal with them stretched
thin, experts stress that the digital chatter is too valuable to ignore. Regardless
of who's actually doing the work-paid
professionals, the government, VOST
volunteers, Humanity Road volunteers,
tech companies, or aid organizations-social monitoring advocates are
adamant that it must continue and
expand further. "It's inevitable," Rueter
said. "Whether you call it VOST or
something else, there's no way of denying you need to be on social media."
JESSE ROMAN is associate editor of NFPA Journal.

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