Assigned Blog Post #12 Dealing with Technology and Crisis Responce

After taking this class personally I feel that I have learned a lot about disasters and the best ways to be prepared and combat them to the best our abilities. I feel that the SRA students that have taken this class have a head start compared to everyone else that has not taken the Crisis Informatics class this semester. We have covered so many different disasters in the duration of the class as well as the best solutions to these disasters. Some of the disasters we have covered range from terrorist attacks to hurricanes and finally to earthquakes. The point is that no matter the natural disaster you must realize that in a sense these are all manmade because man has a way to either prevent or mitigate these disasters no matter what type they may be. I think that is one of the most important things that we learned in this entire class.

I think that this class was made up of most if not all SRA majors compared to IST majors. I actually believe that there was one geography major in the class and I think she was lucky to pick up this class because we have learned so much this semester about disaster response. If anyone is looking to really getting into the disaster response field this was defiantly the class to take. Most people in the Information Science and Technology major are getting a hold of the latest technology that the Penn State campus and money has to offer. I have learned of many technologies such as Analyst’s Notebook, Arc GIS, ACH diagrams, and the Extreme Events Lab here in the IST building that have given me a good basis of things that are to come one day in the intelligence field and/or the crisis management field.

One of the most effective solutions to natural disasters that I have learned from this class would have to include social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is the most visited topic that we have hit this semester and its effect it has on disaster relief. I need no go into detail on how it works because we have all been learning about it this semester. May I say as well that if you have not taken this class and you are reading this blog I highly suggest learning from some source or another how social networking effects disaster relief efforts.

Overall, I would have to say that the Security and Risk Analysis students have a leg up on the competition compared to any of the Information Science and Technology majors and any other majors because of all the perks and technology we are able to get our hands on and learn for free. I feel that I have chosen the perfect major for dealing with new technologies that may emerge in the near future and finding ways to implement them for crisis management. At the link below you can find a video describing the importance of crisis management:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EQBVroYXck

Personal Blog Post #1 Joe Paterno Penn State Riot

It was the quiet before the storm on a normal Wednesday night in State College, Pennsylvania before the initial smack of reality hit every Penn State student that late evening. At around 11 o’clock PM on that Wednesday night an emergency press conference was held to determine the punishments for the allegations against children who were abused by prior Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky. That night the press conference confirmed that not only the President of Penn State was fired, but also the head coach of the football team record holder Joe Paterno would never coach another football game at Penn State. I could only imagine what was going through every students head; we would do everything in our power to stop this from happening and we would go down with a fight. This was war.

My three roommates and I quickly made our way to Old Main where the peaceful protest began. Little did we know this protest would not stay peaceful for very long. The police gathered at the Old Main building and began forcing students back with minimal force. At this point in the evening it was around 12 AM when the students rushed to Beaver Ave. downtown State College. At this point the peaceful protest was no more when police formed into lines with riot gear and began to mace students at will in order to break up the peaceful mob. At this point the students decided to fight back instead of run from this unbeatable force. I witnessed many students bring down light poles, throw rocks and other objects at the police, and it even got to the point of flipping news vans. We never thought that this is what we had in store for this night.

When the initial mace attack began students began to retreat and flee back to Old Main. It was at this point when the mob was moving as one the police were relentlessly using mace on students at will. At this point I was maced in my eyes, mouth, face, and arms. I cannot begin to tell you how painful this was, but all I could think about was finding water. One of my roommates and me raced to the HUB where I can’t my eyes under a sink for 45 minutes until the pain finally died away. At this point the police had called in for back up using the radios in their cars and radios they were wearing at the time, while the remaining students amassed on College Ave.  At this point the riot became worse and cars began to be flipped. I figured it was time to leave at this point and I am very glad I did. As we were driving home we saw a total of 7 cop cars racing down Atherton Street to the final wave of the riot. When we got home we watched students on the television being maced with no warning. I was glad the night had finally come to an end.

This is the video online now that was on the news that night interviewing students during the riot and seeing what they had to say:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXCZKUp45o0

This was a crazy night for all Penn State students and I’m glad I made it out safe.

Assigned Post #11 Geovisual analytics and crisis management

I am sad to say that I was about an hour late for this week’s class because I was at the hospital getting x-rays taken because I broke my finger playing football. From what I got out of the speaker from this week’s presentation it was more about Tweets. May I say that I am getting really tired of hearing about Twitter and all of its crisis management applications. Sure it is interesting, but I feel like this is all that this class has become for more than the last month. I feel like there are far greater thing that we could discuss besides Twitter every class period and a prime example is what my presentation is on tonight. Overall, the speaker seemed like a pretty interesting guy, but I wasn’t really interested in what he had to say about Twitter.

After the speaker had finished speaking we learned that we would not be presenting in class today. I was thrilled at this fact because we were instead given ample time to work on our final projects for this class. Apparently I missed an interesting beginning to the class where Professor Tapia bashed all of the students on the final project and explained to us all how bad we are doing. Because of this, we focused the most of the class trying to find out a new scope to the final project. The new scope that we have chosen for the project was to focus on the 911 dispatch center within the time frame of 24 after a natural disaster or terrorist attack in a heavily populated area. It took us most of the class to come up with this and then clear it with the professor to make sure that we were on the right track again.

I must say that tonight’s class was very dull for me because I ended up missing the speaker and I had an interesting speech to do that was skipped so that we could work on our group projects. My speech was on Geovisual analytics and crisis management. Some of the important tools that went along with this included the programs Arc GIS and Google Earth. I actually took a class last semester that dealt with visual analytics called SRA 478, in which we primarily learned how to use the program Arc GIS. I think that this will help me in the long run especially if I was to one day going into the crisis management field.

I didn’t think that today’s class was very interesting, but that may be because I missed half of it due to my broken hand. I think today made me realize that I want to get into a career later in life that involves using the program Arc GIS because it is very fun to use once you get good at it and also I feel that it has an impressive real world application. It makes me feel like I can go out and do some good in the world with this program to help people. At the link below you can find an interesting video on Arc GIS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp7vDUkf9PQ

Assigned Post #10 Extreme Events Lab and Twitter Usage

At the beginning of this week’s class we were surprised with an exciting event instead of simply listening to student presentations for the entire class. Within five minutes after the beginning of class we were off to the extreme events lab in the Information Science and Technology building in order to see a very interesting 3D presentation. I walked into this room and was amazed to see how cool this was. We were all given 3D glasses to wear for this presentation and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. One day when I am rich from my awesome career I would like to have a room in my house specifically designed for this purpose for both work and play.

 I think that the coolest thing the professor showed us during the presentation was the 3D map of flights out of the LAX airport in California. The patterns that the planes flew were very interesting because you could see the elevations, different flight, and also different flight patterns. I also wish to see the other room the professor was talking about that has all four walls and the floor all as screens to give the true 3D effect. Overall, I believe that this invention is a great tool to be used at Penn State and anywhere else for that matter. This room is awesome and I think that any students able should take advantage of doing a project in this room.

The second half of the class consisted of student presentations by Jen, Tony, and so on. All of these presentations were all revolved around the topic of using Twitter for disaster relief and Humanitarian efforts. A study was done on Facebook during school shootings such as Virginia Tech where students were putting information online about the events before the police and news crews would even figure out what was going on. I think it’s really cool that his was happening even back then because we have been talking about this all semester. Later, as social networking became more prevalent, people began to use it more and more when disasters struck such as hurricanes and earthquakes. Another example of social networking being used was for wildfires and floods. Wildfires were harder to predict than floods and Tweeting actually worked better for geo-locations with the floods instead of the wildfires.

I think that the articles that we went over in class today was kind of a review of the articles and class periods that we have been talking about all semester, but it reinforced the information very well. I happened to find an interesting video on YouTube involving Twitter’s effect on disaster relief. The video is titled “Talking Twitter Hash tags In Crisis Communication/ Atlanta Flood 2009”. The link can be found below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpw9DNC9Hmk

This video was very interesting and I highly suggest watching it if you want to learn more about Twitter’s uses during natural disasters. Overall, this class was very interesting and I look forward to researching and presenting during next week’s class. 

Assigned Post #9 Earthquake in Japan

This week’s blog post may not be as interesting as usual because I was unable to make this week’s class session due to the movement of class days; however I am going to try my best to make my blog post as interesting and informative as possible. After reading the required readings that were due for this week’s class I have found that this information is on the earthquake that happened in Japan. This ended up being a ground breaking natural disaster because for the first time ever social media was implemented for humanitarian use in a developed society. Because of this natural disaster, social networking usage spiked in Japan as they began to be used for disaster relief along with playful activities. Beat Communication Co., Ltd. is the largest provider of social networking packages in Japan and made all of this possible. Thanks to social networking many lives have been saved in the last decade due to natural disasters.

I found an amazing statistic in the reading that said after the earthquake social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter went up 60-70% in total. Another type of new social networking that was used was called mixi. As quoted from one of the assigned readings, “Japan used mixi to confirm the safety of employees, friends and family, to learn more about the disaster situation (such as the damage done to modes of transportation and electrical grids) and to listen to public service announcements and press reports in lieu of television”. As you can tell from the quote above after every new natural disaster, humans are coming up with new innovative ways to make good use of new types of technologies such as social media in order to benefit those around them in perilous times.

As a result of the earthquake in Japan, many corporations have begun implementing their own social networking sites or simply using Twitter as a communication system in the case that there is a natural disaster. I feel this is essential because social networking sites have proved time and time again to be excellent when used in disaster relief. The better prepared people are all over the world for these disasters, the less lives will be lost when these disasters really strike. As I also read from the assigned article, statistics also show that people using Twitter in Japan received quicker and better organized information than others. I truly believe that social networking is the way of the future whether you are using it for work or play it is everywhere in today’s society.  

After reading these articles on Angel I thought that it would be beneficial to find a video about the earthquake in Japan and see first hand what it was like and also watch a video on how social networking affected humanitarian efforts. This video I found was titled “Japan Earthquake 2011- Twitter Messages” and can be found at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq_q9tVTupI

This video gave a very good description of what happened in Japan that sad day and linked it with a social network aspect. Note, the music in the video was terrible and made me want to rip my ears off, however the pictures were solid.

Assigned Post #8 Patrick Meier and Crisis Mapping

Tonight’s class is the last class for the last guest speaker and I have been looking forward to it all last week. I have been interested to see if Patrick Meier can live up to the standards that the rest of the speakers set for him. At the beginning of the class we talked for one hour before we had to Skype the guest speaker for the lecture. During this hour we seemed to accomplish a lot of work. One of the things that we did was chose reading topics for the next few lectures. Another important part of tonight’s class was to choose our groups for the final project and then pick a topic that the group will focus on for the final project. Following the first hour we began our Skype lecture with Patrick Meier.

I feel that this Skype chat was a lot more productive than the last one we had around 3 weeks ago. This one was extremely clear and we could hear everything that the speaker was saying. I also thought that this speaker was the most interesting out of the four we have had. I would have preferred to see him speak in person to ask better questions, but overall the presentation was great. Patrick Meier is quite the expert on crisis mapping. He gave a virtual example of a map of Haiti that I thought was very interesting that showed an explosion to simulate the earthquake. Following this all of the earthquakes appeared slowing on the map to portray all the volunteers that worked on these maps. Patrick also showed us a global map in which the readers could see all over the world of the volunteers who translated Haitian Creole into English in order for rescue teams to be able to help. 

Volunteers have been proven time and time again to be the heart and soul of the humanitarian society. Crisis mapping is a critical step for humanitarian agencies because it makes it possible for them to see what things are like on the ground and what is happening around them without them actually being there. This allows them to find areas that need aid and supplies more than other areas that need less. Without crisis mapping the humanitarian workers on the ground would not know what to do and exactly where to go. By the use of connectivity combined with crisis mapping information is shared in order to save lives.

I thought that this speaker was one of the best that we have seen yet for sure. Following the class period I searched for some interesting videos on YouTube and found this interesting clip. It was titled “The Future of Crisis Mapping in Disaster Response” and can be found at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_NguESRZ4g

The video was by the same speaker that we had in class this week and was very interesting. It reinforced the topics we covered last class and I highly advise watching it. This speaker was very impressive and I would like to hear him speak again someday.   

Assigned Post #7 Edward Granger-Happ and the International Red Cross

May I be the first to say that tonight’s speaker Edward Happ who works with the International Red Cross and also Net Hope was a very interesting speaker and had a variety of knowledge to share with the class. When the class began I found it very interesting that he has had three careers in his life already and he is still in the process of looking for two more careers before he wishes to retire. May I also add that the only disappointing part about this lecture was the lack of pizza. I think the next guest lecture should definitely include pizza. Overall, I think this was the best guest speaker we had thus far due to his massive amounts of experience in the humanitarian world. I think he was also the most famous that we have had the pleasure of hearing thus far. In any case after his introduction to the lecture I was already impressed.

According to Edward, his organization is based on three things; crisis, connections, and collaboration. Crisis in this sense is defined as the world stage getting more challenging. This makes sense because new disasters are always creating new problems to fix all over the world. The connections stage states that responding to crisis with technology is becoming more social. A good example of this is the use of social networking sites for humanitarian efforts such as Twitter and Facebook. Finally, collaboration was defined as different groups working together in order to achieve a common goal. The best example I can think of this was the earthquake in Haiti. Collaboration was at an all-time high during this disaster for government agencies, non-profit organizations, and even the victims themselves because everyone was sharing information.

Another event that I remember fairly well from the presentation was the earthquake in San Francisco, California in 1989. I was just a wee lad during that year and had no idea that it was even going on all the way over on the west coast of the United States. The earthquake conveniently hot at 5:04PM during rush hour, and we all know drivers in California drive fast to begin with. There was mass destruction including buildings being destroyed and many lives were taken. The speaker also brought up an essential point for us as a class; he said that in order for us to remember what his lecture was on he would tell stories to make the information stick. I think that is a genius idea and I will use that in my job in the future whatever that might be. 

Overall, I thought this speaker was the most interesting out of all the speakers thus far. He kept my attention easily and reinforced a lot of topics that we had previously discussed during class lectures. I found a YouTube video after class ended tonight on Edward and his work with Net Hope. It was titled Ed Granger-Happ on the Future of NetHope, and could be found at the following link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUKP8qCdupg

This presentation was excellent and I am eager to see how the next speaker turns out.