No folks this isn’t the sound of your peeps chirping from your Easter basket. This is catchy title for this piece, about the popular website Twitter. I’m not here to talk about what Chad Ochocinco said, or what the Kardashians are doing this weekend. I’m here to inform all of you how tweeting can be very helpful for communities during disasters.
As most of you know Twitter is a website that allows members to tell the world what they think, what they are doing, ask a question, basically just about anything they want to write about. Its like this webpage Blogspot, Twitter allows member to write short blogs, no more than 140 characters, that can be updated at anytime of the day. Yes, live updates, like the little tracker at the bottom of ESPN. (Do you follow? If not go to this link and learn more, http://twitter.com/about.) One can come to the conclusion that Twitter can be used for more than just telling your friends, “Watching Idol with my Favs!”
Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) is a perfect example of using Twitter to help the public. LAFD updates it’s Twitter page with tweets about fires happening in Los Angeles. They inform people with the building location, number of responding firefighters, injuries and casualties. A typical tweet would be, “12126 Burbank BI* No ‘formal’ evacuations; Firefighters maintaining 500’ exclusion zone pending LAFD Hazmat arrival.” This would be useful for people who live in or near that building and people driving home, they would know to avoid that area. Which leads me to my next point, the integration of Twitter, traffic advisory radio, and your car’s GPS.
Just think you are rushing home one afternoon to catch your son’s baseball game. Unfortunately you hit traffic due to a large pile up. You miss his walk off homerun and he never lets you live it down. This could be avoided if we create a third party company that works along with twitter, traffic advisory radio and your car’s GPS provider. Someone could tweet about an accident, the company then would inform the traffic advisory radio, who could send information to your GPS, telling you to avoid I-95 due to that accident. This is just another way how technology could be/is helping us Americans on a daily basis
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for including the Los Angeles Fire Department in your mention of technology that may (and hopefully will) prove applicable to managing emergencies.
Please know that the men and women of the LAFD are among those working hard behind the scenes on a variety of (yet to be funded) projects that will indeed bring timely and actionable data to the public through a synergy of what are now independent systems.
We hope you are enjoying your time at U of M. Please let us know when your travel plans include Los Angeles. There is plenty of room at our firehouse kitchen table, and always a warm cup of coffee with your name on it.
Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,
Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department