today I’m here to talk about one of the
most under studied and misunderstood
parts of disasters and that is the power
of communication you know things like
laptop computers mobile devices these
are the types of things that I study at
the University of Texas at Austin I’m
gonna begin though by sharing with you
why I study what I study especially in a
disaster and an emergency context so I
grew up on the Clear Fork of the Brazos
River in North Central Texas and in 1978
my parents got a phone call and they
told us our house was gonna flood well
we all walked outside and looked up and
we were like there’s not a cloud in the
sky it hasn’t been raining here and then
several days later people arrive to
evacuate my sister and I and a day later
there was literally that much water in
my house almost five feet and it stayed
there for two and a half weeks so when I
got to go back into my home I still
remember I walked into my bedroom and I
had orange shag carpet
you know leftover from the 70s and there
were dead frogs in my carpet and some of
the frogs weren’t dead but I lived in a
part of Texas that’s oil country and so
some of the oil tankers had been spilled
over by the rushing water what happened
is those frogs that were still alive
were still coated with oil a wonderful
young woman from the American Red Cross
put her hand on my shoulder and said oh
honey let’s get out of here I’m gonna
take you over and I’m gonna let you pick
out some new bedroom furniture that’s
what I grew up on donated furniture from
the American Red Cross white with
flowers on it
you know our family didn’t have flood
insurance we never expected this to
happen but you know what we rebuilt so
fast forward to last year August of 2017
I’m sitting in Austin Texas and I find
myself watching the events that are
happening with hurricane Harvey and what
I realized very quickly what I realized
very quickly is that it was a lot like
what I had experienced it was a flood
and so one of the things that I can do
as a researcher is I can write grant
proposals and I can try to get the funds
to go study and understand disasters
like this so that’s what I did and I was
fortunate enough to have the study
funded by the National Science
Foundation so I got a team together we
went to Houston and we started
collecting data what we really wanted to
understand is what worked what was
challenging and what are we going to
need to do the next time when and it is
not if as we are all fully aware today
it is when it happens again I’m going to
share with you some of those stories and
some of the examples from our data that
we collected I’m going to do it in three
different kind of buckets first of all
I’m going to talk about how people
posted what we call calls for help on
social media to get rescued then I’m
going to share some examples of citizens
who work together with official
emergency responders and then I’ll share
some about how official emergency
responder groups work together now what
a lot of people don’t realize is that
when the hurricane hit in Houston there
was a lot of flooding that happened
happened and the flooding came up in
different waves and so what happened to
some people is they woke up and they
literally found that there was water
either in their home or coming up very
close to their home or they were
landlocked in their neighborhood and so
some of them called 911 but a lot of
people started posting I need rescue I
need help on social media platforms such
as Facebook next door even some
forms such as WeChat and what happened
is that actually activated a lot of
these responses so what happened next is
that a lot of the volunteer groups were
not necessarily using a lot of
proprietary technology but they use
things everybody has they used Google
Docs and then they downloaded apps like
Zelo the walkie talkie app and that is
how they coordinated as average citizens
to rescue people the third thing that
happened how people really did use
social media is in the recovery effort
so when they were trying to recover one
of the things that you have to do when
your house has been underwater is you
have to do something called mucking okay
that is such a gross sounding word right
but and it is actually a really gross
process what you do is you go back into
your home and you pull out all of the
sheetrock and insulation and if you
don’t do that quickly mold grows and so
it’s really important and so what people
were doing is they were posting hey
we’re gonna go into this neighborhood
come join us we’re gonna muck these
houses together and it served as a way
to pull people together when they tried
to rebuild so the second set of data
that I’m going to share with you has to
do with the way that citizens got
involved with official emergency
responders some of you may be aware that
when the National Guard comes into an
area that’s been that’s had a disaster
strike they don’t necessarily they’re
not from the area and so when people
suggested that I interview a member of a
running club I was like a running club
what does that have to do with disasters
boy did I get schooled I’ll tell you I
know so much more about runners and this
delightful group of runners really
taught me a lot about the role they
played in rescuing people
so runners often wear some type of a
mobile device on their bodies they know
elevation changes in the neighborhood
and when you have a flood that happened
like this the difference between two
feet can mean water in someone’s house
or not the other thing is they know all
the back alleys they know who’s in town
and who isn’t and so what she did and
there’s a picture of her sneakers as she
hopped in with the National Guard and
she became their navigator she did that
for well over a week and helped rescue
people in that navigator role now the
other thing you got to realize is that a
lot of the official emergency responders
come in with these big robust
walkie-talkie units that are
weatherproof and you need that when it’s
raining outside
however she couldn’t talk to the
National Guard’s people because their
proprietary systems so their only option
was to exchange personal cell phone
numbers and so whenever things changed
and the conditions would would make a
what a road be covered in water they
would quickly text each other and plan
where they’re gonna meet so what we
found in our data set is that mobile
devices personal mobile devices ended up
being the way that they could have a
shared communication tool I’ll share
another example there was a police
officer who was sent out to a
neighborhood to try to evacuate a lot of
different people and in the process of
being in the neighborhood he realized
that there was a woman with a clipboard
and she was checking things off he went
over and talked with her come to find
out she knew everybody in the
neighborhood she knew who had diabetes
she knew who needed to get back in to
get their medications and so what he did
once again they exchanged personal cell
phone numbers and every day that he went
out he would get an update from this
citizen who volunteered her time so what
I’ve raised here so far especially in
these situations where official
emergency Rock responders have these
robust radios is a term called
interoperability that means do you have
the same shared communication
tools you can talk to each other so the
lack of interoperability that we saw
throughout all of our data set is
actually very concerning and it’s not
just concerning between a citizen group
and an official responder it’s also
concerning between official responders
I’ll share my last example from the data
set there were two counties that each
had these robust radios right they
needed to coordinate rescues because
people needed to be rescued between the
two counties they found out that they
couldn’t talk to each other because they
had different proprietary radio systems
do you know how they solved the problem
with bodies they put one person from one
of the counties with that proprietary
system on the boat with the person from
the other County and that is how they
had to coordinate so that they could
have a shared communication platform so
all the examples that I’ve shared today
have come from Hurricane Harvey in the
Greater Houston area but I think we’re
all aware that disasters of this type
are of global concern so that leads me
to ask the question how do we rethink
disaster communication I’ll give you
some ideas first of all I’m going to
talk kind of on a big-picture
perspective the main thing that we need
to do is we need to be thinking about
communication before a disaster hits
think about this a lot of times we talk
about rebuilding infrastructure to make
sure that disasters don’t happen and
that’s very important but we also need
to fund research and we need to fund
what’s happening with communication the
reason is that when a disaster hits it’s
actually communication that saves lives
in the moment the second thing we need
to do is we need to make sure that we
are talking with people who speak lots
of different languages and from many
different cultures they have to be at
the table to have this conversation
about communication
I have a bit of a dream that what I’m
hoping we will eventually be able to do
is have a citizen and young adult
possibly even college student social
media task force that we can activate
whenever we need help during a disaster
and the third thing is we need to deal
with this interoperability issue we’ve
known about it for a long time it’s very
very serious and it’s not going away
I’ll share two personal tips too I want
you all to think how many of you have
thought about communication as part of
your disaster preparedness plans you may
have gotten bottled water you may know
about those types of things I would
suggest that we all need to have
conversations with friends and family
and we need to make decisions ahead of
time about are we going to post things
on social media is that the way we want
to be rescued those conversations are
vital the next tip which will make a few
people uncomfortable is that now that we
have our mobile phones with us all the
time and that’s the main way that we’re
calling people today battery life is key
you need batteries and backup batteries
for your mobile phones because the power
often goes out in these types of
disasters so what does hurricane Harvey
had in common and how is it different
from what I experienced on the clear
Fork of the Brazos River in 1978 it’s
actually a matter of analog
communication versus digital
communication so in 1978 we were able to
call friends and family they then called
their friends and family people showed
up and rescued us furthermore what
people were able to do is members of our
church hand wrote their recipe cards for
us and that is what I actually learned
to cook on because we’d lost all of our
recipe books
that’s analog communication so now let’s
take about digital
communication today it’s lightning fast
what happens is you post one message on
social media your network spreads that
message and all of a sudden thousands of
people have heard your call for help
within minutes you know people are still
resilient they were in 1978 and they are
still today but what’s really amazing in
our incredible opportunity is that today
we have access to so many different
digital communication tools that will
help us coordinate communicate and save
lives thank you [Applause]
most under studied and misunderstood
parts of disasters and that is the power
of communication you know things like
laptop computers mobile devices these
are the types of things that I study at
the University of Texas at Austin I’m
gonna begin though by sharing with you
why I study what I study especially in a
disaster and an emergency context so I
grew up on the Clear Fork of the Brazos
River in North Central Texas and in 1978
my parents got a phone call and they
told us our house was gonna flood well
we all walked outside and looked up and
we were like there’s not a cloud in the
sky it hasn’t been raining here and then
several days later people arrive to
evacuate my sister and I and a day later
there was literally that much water in
my house almost five feet and it stayed
there for two and a half weeks so when I
got to go back into my home I still
remember I walked into my bedroom and I
had orange shag carpet
you know leftover from the 70s and there
were dead frogs in my carpet and some of
the frogs weren’t dead but I lived in a
part of Texas that’s oil country and so
some of the oil tankers had been spilled
over by the rushing water what happened
is those frogs that were still alive
were still coated with oil a wonderful
young woman from the American Red Cross
put her hand on my shoulder and said oh
honey let’s get out of here I’m gonna
take you over and I’m gonna let you pick
out some new bedroom furniture that’s
what I grew up on donated furniture from
the American Red Cross white with
flowers on it
you know our family didn’t have flood
insurance we never expected this to
happen but you know what we rebuilt so
fast forward to last year August of 2017
I’m sitting in Austin Texas and I find
myself watching the events that are
happening with hurricane Harvey and what
I realized very quickly what I realized
very quickly is that it was a lot like
what I had experienced it was a flood
and so one of the things that I can do
as a researcher is I can write grant
proposals and I can try to get the funds
to go study and understand disasters
like this so that’s what I did and I was
fortunate enough to have the study
funded by the National Science
Foundation so I got a team together we
went to Houston and we started
collecting data what we really wanted to
understand is what worked what was
challenging and what are we going to
need to do the next time when and it is
not if as we are all fully aware today
it is when it happens again I’m going to
share with you some of those stories and
some of the examples from our data that
we collected I’m going to do it in three
different kind of buckets first of all
I’m going to talk about how people
posted what we call calls for help on
social media to get rescued then I’m
going to share some examples of citizens
who work together with official
emergency responders and then I’ll share
some about how official emergency
responder groups work together now what
a lot of people don’t realize is that
when the hurricane hit in Houston there
was a lot of flooding that happened
happened and the flooding came up in
different waves and so what happened to
some people is they woke up and they
literally found that there was water
either in their home or coming up very
close to their home or they were
landlocked in their neighborhood and so
some of them called 911 but a lot of
people started posting I need rescue I
need help on social media platforms such
as Facebook next door even some
forms such as WeChat and what happened
is that actually activated a lot of
these responses so what happened next is
that a lot of the volunteer groups were
not necessarily using a lot of
proprietary technology but they use
things everybody has they used Google
Docs and then they downloaded apps like
Zelo the walkie talkie app and that is
how they coordinated as average citizens
to rescue people the third thing that
happened how people really did use
social media is in the recovery effort
so when they were trying to recover one
of the things that you have to do when
your house has been underwater is you
have to do something called mucking okay
that is such a gross sounding word right
but and it is actually a really gross
process what you do is you go back into
your home and you pull out all of the
sheetrock and insulation and if you
don’t do that quickly mold grows and so
it’s really important and so what people
were doing is they were posting hey
we’re gonna go into this neighborhood
come join us we’re gonna muck these
houses together and it served as a way
to pull people together when they tried
to rebuild so the second set of data
that I’m going to share with you has to
do with the way that citizens got
involved with official emergency
responders some of you may be aware that
when the National Guard comes into an
area that’s been that’s had a disaster
strike they don’t necessarily they’re
not from the area and so when people
suggested that I interview a member of a
running club I was like a running club
what does that have to do with disasters
boy did I get schooled I’ll tell you I
know so much more about runners and this
delightful group of runners really
taught me a lot about the role they
played in rescuing people
so runners often wear some type of a
mobile device on their bodies they know
elevation changes in the neighborhood
and when you have a flood that happened
like this the difference between two
feet can mean water in someone’s house
or not the other thing is they know all
the back alleys they know who’s in town
and who isn’t and so what she did and
there’s a picture of her sneakers as she
hopped in with the National Guard and
she became their navigator she did that
for well over a week and helped rescue
people in that navigator role now the
other thing you got to realize is that a
lot of the official emergency responders
come in with these big robust
walkie-talkie units that are
weatherproof and you need that when it’s
raining outside
however she couldn’t talk to the
National Guard’s people because their
proprietary systems so their only option
was to exchange personal cell phone
numbers and so whenever things changed
and the conditions would would make a
what a road be covered in water they
would quickly text each other and plan
where they’re gonna meet so what we
found in our data set is that mobile
devices personal mobile devices ended up
being the way that they could have a
shared communication tool I’ll share
another example there was a police
officer who was sent out to a
neighborhood to try to evacuate a lot of
different people and in the process of
being in the neighborhood he realized
that there was a woman with a clipboard
and she was checking things off he went
over and talked with her come to find
out she knew everybody in the
neighborhood she knew who had diabetes
she knew who needed to get back in to
get their medications and so what he did
once again they exchanged personal cell
phone numbers and every day that he went
out he would get an update from this
citizen who volunteered her time so what
I’ve raised here so far especially in
these situations where official
emergency Rock responders have these
robust radios is a term called
interoperability that means do you have
the same shared communication
tools you can talk to each other so the
lack of interoperability that we saw
throughout all of our data set is
actually very concerning and it’s not
just concerning between a citizen group
and an official responder it’s also
concerning between official responders
I’ll share my last example from the data
set there were two counties that each
had these robust radios right they
needed to coordinate rescues because
people needed to be rescued between the
two counties they found out that they
couldn’t talk to each other because they
had different proprietary radio systems
do you know how they solved the problem
with bodies they put one person from one
of the counties with that proprietary
system on the boat with the person from
the other County and that is how they
had to coordinate so that they could
have a shared communication platform so
all the examples that I’ve shared today
have come from Hurricane Harvey in the
Greater Houston area but I think we’re
all aware that disasters of this type
are of global concern so that leads me
to ask the question how do we rethink
disaster communication I’ll give you
some ideas first of all I’m going to
talk kind of on a big-picture
perspective the main thing that we need
to do is we need to be thinking about
communication before a disaster hits
think about this a lot of times we talk
about rebuilding infrastructure to make
sure that disasters don’t happen and
that’s very important but we also need
to fund research and we need to fund
what’s happening with communication the
reason is that when a disaster hits it’s
actually communication that saves lives
in the moment the second thing we need
to do is we need to make sure that we
are talking with people who speak lots
of different languages and from many
different cultures they have to be at
the table to have this conversation
about communication
I have a bit of a dream that what I’m
hoping we will eventually be able to do
is have a citizen and young adult
possibly even college student social
media task force that we can activate
whenever we need help during a disaster
and the third thing is we need to deal
with this interoperability issue we’ve
known about it for a long time it’s very
very serious and it’s not going away
I’ll share two personal tips too I want
you all to think how many of you have
thought about communication as part of
your disaster preparedness plans you may
have gotten bottled water you may know
about those types of things I would
suggest that we all need to have
conversations with friends and family
and we need to make decisions ahead of
time about are we going to post things
on social media is that the way we want
to be rescued those conversations are
vital the next tip which will make a few
people uncomfortable is that now that we
have our mobile phones with us all the
time and that’s the main way that we’re
calling people today battery life is key
you need batteries and backup batteries
for your mobile phones because the power
often goes out in these types of
disasters so what does hurricane Harvey
had in common and how is it different
from what I experienced on the clear
Fork of the Brazos River in 1978 it’s
actually a matter of analog
communication versus digital
communication so in 1978 we were able to
call friends and family they then called
their friends and family people showed
up and rescued us furthermore what
people were able to do is members of our
church hand wrote their recipe cards for
us and that is what I actually learned
to cook on because we’d lost all of our
recipe books
that’s analog communication so now let’s
take about digital
communication today it’s lightning fast
what happens is you post one message on
social media your network spreads that
message and all of a sudden thousands of
people have heard your call for help
within minutes you know people are still
resilient they were in 1978 and they are
still today but what’s really amazing in
our incredible opportunity is that today
we have access to so many different
digital communication tools that will
help us coordinate communicate and save
lives thank you [Applause]
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