By Mark Riccardi, American Military University
Crowdsourcing, or using the power of the Internet and social media to “virtually” bring together large groups of people in support of a cause or event, has successfully been used to help emergency responders during disaster management. Recent examples include the disappearance of Malaysian Flight 370 in which satellite imagery was made available to the public and opened the door for potentially thousands of individuals to study the imagery and look for clues about the fate of the missing airliner. Crowdsourcing also helped first responders identify destroyed structures during the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado and the 2013 tornadoes in Oklahoma.
I am currently conducting research on the use of crowdsourcing during a disaster as a way to mobilize resources in support of recovery operations. I am specifically exploring the idea of how can crowdsourcing methods be used in support of the incident commander during response operations.
To help understand this issue better I had the opportunity to interview several senior leaders from the Colorado Department of Homeland Security as well as academics who are part of the Department of Homeland Security Center’s of Excellence, in this case the Center for Visualization and Data Analytics. As a researcher, it was extremely interesting and rewarding for me to interview the academic theorists as well as the practitioners who eventually benefit from the theory and technology developed by the theorists.
Full Story: Research Initiative: How Crowdsourcing Can Benefit Disaster Operations