Typhoon Haiyan: the limits of crowdsourcing?
22nd January 2014
As the global media coverage of the destruction meted out by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) on November 8th gradually recedes, the recovery effort in the Philippines continues. With 14.1 million people affected and 4.1 million displaced, the recovery will likely be a long, arduous process for the communities involved as individuals return to their home areas. No stranger to flooding, the Philippines has made use of social media to aid rescue and recovery operations.
Disaster response and recovery processes are increasingly relying on crowdsourcing as a means of building an operational picture of needs. One of the services used to aid coordination in the Philippines was the Rescue PH project, which has been in operation for seasonal floods since 2012. Though there is also a related website, the initiative is based largely on the use of Twitter and involves tweeting your name, location (preferably through geotagging) and need, followed by the hashtag #RescuePH. This information is then manually compiled on an Excel file and forwarded to point persons in the National Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) of the Philippines.
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RescuePH was very successful when Typhoon Pablo (Bopha) hit in 2012, generating information of sufficient quality to allow comprehensive crisis-mapping by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). However, as the hashtag has become better known, the white noise has grown and its usefulness declined. For instance, during Tropical Storm Trami (Maring) in August 2013, many tweets featuring #RescuePH were actually informational posts about the hashtags and hashtag abuse warnings, instead of tweets providing information or requesting assistance on the ground.
This trend has unfortunately continued in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan. Instead of being used for rescue and recovery purposes by people in affected areas, the hashtag has been adopted by observers who mean well, but effectively misuse the concept to publicise the service, send good wishes to the survivors or document their own activities.
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The Filipino government has also remarked that those monitoring the hashtag also have a hard time because their feeds tend to be flooded with people reminding civilians to use the hashtags and other posts not actually calling for rescue and that they have run into problems in the past of calls for rescue being retweeted many times even though they have already been reported [2].
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The rise and fall of RescuePHs effectiveness gives us food for thought on the hereto much-touted concept of crowdsourcing through social media. RescuePH seems to have been very useful in less-publicised, smaller scale events such as Typhoon Pablo. However, growing media coverage and global attention contributing to the diluting the relevance and therefore the benefit of this tool.
It seems evident that the collection and analysis of crowdsourced data must be further developed to mitigate some of the difficulties outlined above. One of these is how to focus social media activity on the affected and responding communities to ensure relevant and up-to-date information. Another is to limit misuse of functional hashtags to decrease the white noise generated by well-meaning observers. A further issue is the avoidance of information duplication to maximise efficiency.
While platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have emerged as undoubtedly crucial assets in building operational pictures in disaster areas, some issues remain to be addressed before their full potential in adding to the work of professional responders and local communities is reached.
[1] Government of the Philippines, Department for Social Welfare and Development
[2] Government of the Philippines, Department for Social Welfare and Development
Links to related topics:
http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/disaster/40019-social-media-disasters-netizens
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3020923/how-the-red-cross-used-tweets-to-save-lives-during-hurricane-sandy
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2013/11/24/qa-philippine-lessons-in-post-disaster-recovery/
The rise and fall of RescuePHs effectiveness gives us food for thought on the hereto much-touted concept of crowdsourcing through social media. RescuePH seems to have been very useful in less-publicised, smaller scale events such as Typhoon Pablo. However, growing media coverage and global attention contributing to the diluting the relevance and therefore the benefit of this tool.
It seems evident that the collection and analysis of crowdsourced data must be further developed to mitigate some of the difficulties outlined above. One of these is how to focus social media activity on the affected and responding communities to ensure relevant and up-to-date information. Another is to limit misuse of functional hashtags to decrease the white noise generated by well-meaning observers. A further issue is the avoidance of information duplication to maximise efficiency.
While platforms such as Twitter and Facebook have emerged as undoubtedly crucial assets in building operational pictures in disaster areas, some issues remain to be addressed before their full potential in adding to the work of professional responders and local communities is reached.
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