Good idea, but is it new? When I read (hat tip easyhiker) that computer scientists at the University of Maryland were suggesting logging onto a social networking site as a useful adjunct to official information in the event of a pandemic, I thought this was not a new idea. The grandaddy/mama of sites like this, The Flu Wiki, has been up since June of 2005. It regularly logs thousands of daily visitors sharing information and tips on pandemic prepping. Other sites, in bulletin board format, have also been up for a long time. Flublogia is already well-populated.
But an examination of their Policy Paper in the journal Science suggests the idea is not exactly the same, although at first blush it sounded like it:
A bird flu outbreak among humans or a major earthquake will leave emergency call centres quickly overwhelmed, say Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece at the University of Maryland, US. They came up with the idea of creating a web-based emergency alternative, along similar lines to social networking sites MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube.Citizens would use PCs or cellphones to access the site and receive vital updates from the authorities while also sharing information with one another.
This kind of "many-to-many" information exchange, which might include sharing photos and video clips, could be at least as valuable as an emergency call centre or a radio or TV-based alert system.
"The web is a very effective way of disseminating information," Shneiderman notes. "There seems to be a remarkable effort from people to provide information and develop relationships in the electronic environment." (New Scientist)
So far this is not too different than The Flu Wiki. Flu Wiki has two parts, a repository of flu information (the Wiki proper) which is contributed and edited by the community at large. And a Forum, where current information is shared, traded and developed by its numerous readers. What the Science paper envisages, it seems, is the use of a large network as an additional way to manage the consequences if a pandemic or other disaster were to occur. The Flu Wiki currently keeps people globally up to date and helps them prepare. The U. of Maryland idea is also local:
[The popularity of MySpace and Facebook] suggests that local, state, and federal agencies could build community response grids (CRGs) where residents could report incidents in seconds, receive emergency information, and request resident-to-resident assistance. The current Internet and World Wide Web have proven effective for many purposes, but government agencies have been slow to adopt social computing for national security, disaster response, and emergency relief. (Science 16 February 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5814, p. 944)
Schneiderman and Peerce suggest such local Community Response Grids could be built and run by volunteers with user fees collected through the local Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Ideally they would function in a routine way prior to any catastrophe and serve their emergency purpose in addition. Schneiderman and Peerce also suggest a full fledged research agenda on what makes or breaks online communities whose focus is disaster response.
These aren't new ideas but they are good ones. You know that efforts like The Flu Wiki, the flu boards and Effect Measure and its online colleagues are becoming part of the accepted landscape when they become the subject of academic research on how to do it better.
Once that happens, many of us will probably look for yet another new way to do it.
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Thanks for this Revere, it reminded me of our local system for advice to the public on major incidents.
http://tinyurl.com/22458j
The one thing missing of course, is a community led ability to help each other in times of crisis. I'm writing to them with the suggestion that they have a forum available which can be opened if such an incident occurs.
I can't think of anything worse or more likely to cause public anxiety and frustration, adding to the chaos, than having to rely on soundbites from 'TPTB' and the dead-end links they provide. People will need to feel involved and in personal control to some extent, during a major incident. I think it would benefit everyone concerned if they had a 'place to go' during such a crisis.
Not to be a buzzcrusher, but I don't expect my crappy on and off again Internet access at home to be up and running during a pandemic. And the surge in use? Myspace now takes forever to load with my silly $100 a month "high speed access."
Seriously, I think this is pissing in the wind. People need to go to fluwikie NOW and read up while they still can.
Steph
In the event that the internet goes spotty, a useful "plan B" might be the old-style email listservers. Email is a 'packet' style of information, it's not live, but because it's a packet, it will get routed through eventually. If attachments are not allowed, a lot of plain text can be transmitted on limited bandwidth. Email can be downloaded and read offline, which saves wear and tear on the phone network. Think of Usenet and the old BBS system. The fancy graphics and sound might have to go away, but basic information can be spread around on a fraction of the current system. Actually, I might not miss the ads that much anyway.
We recently switched from DSL to cable internet.
As insurance, we kept the capability to get a dial-up connection in the event the cable were to go down. The more I think about it, the more I think the ability to still get online access in the event of a power failure is worth the $20 a month we're now 'wasting' to maintain a connection we're not using. At the same time, I have my doubts about whether the web can continue to function for us normal folk - I'm pretty sure that the gov't and others have work arounds to still navigate the web long after we wouldn't be able to do so.
Clawdia,
You touched on a topic I've been wondering about.... How reliable is a land-line likely to be in the event of a pandemic? (as opposed to cable or DSL) I'm still using dial up service with MSN and yes, it's agonizingly slow, but we have no cable out here (yet) and my only other option is satellite service which is out of my budget right now. My assumption is that as long as phone service is still functioning and I can recharge my laptop (could I do this off my car battery I wonder???) I could potentially connect to the internet for updates and info. Of course, like you, I don't hold out much hope of being able to log in at all if everyone else is trying to do the same thing.
Posted by Steph - Seriously, I think this is pissing in the wind.
You may be right but I'm not one to roll-over and give up before we even get there! I don't think anyone can know for sure what we will face in a pandemic situation so I'd rather certain facilities were in place than not.
The real assumption is that the power is going to be on. So lets for grins say it is or you have secondary power support. The Hughes Red Head that drives us all nuts on the cable talking about your own uplink capability is one way to go. But on the other hand ouside of the peer to peer system, how much of the internet will there be available. Not much is my guess. They likely will cut all traffic except for emails and communication related activity. Buying online? Maybe. Emails, yep more likely. But depending on how long we are in the houses will determine how much is up. There will be just so much we can do. The postman may be the main method of communication and he may not even be around.
At the recent CIDRAP meeting on business preparation for pandemic influenza, one of the senior directors from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) discussed concerns about the additional load on the internet in the event of a pandemic.
Their working premise was that the last mile would be the largest bottleneck, but that the internet backbone could support the additional load. However, when they did some stress testing on the internet backbone in the New York city area, they found that the internet backbone was also over capacity fairly quickly.
As a result, they are in the process of upgrading the infrastructure in New York. However, given the concentration of business and population in NY, I would expect that they probably have one of the stronger internet backbones in place. If their systems are likely to be overwhelmed during a pandemic outbreak (from all of the remote workers), then then capacity for other parts of the internet would also likely be severely challenged.
Although the internet is not likely to go down completely, it may have periods of time when it is very sluggish (Does anyone remember how slow the internet was after 9/11. I remember many of the large sites taking several minutes to do a page refresh).
When we work with companies for pandemic preparation, we generally suggest that they have multiple access points into the internet for their critical staff working remotely (e.g. cable, dsl, etc.), to allow for an additional channel into the internet, if one channel is overwhelmed. We also have each work area look at alternatives to the internet to do their jobs, if the internet is unavailable for periods of time.
I think the use of online space for public awareness and pandemic information is most useful pre-pandemic. Wiki's and blogs are versatile tools to put together people who would not normally have been able to share information. Given the state of unpreparedness of most of the world, I would say 99% of the work on pandemic prep has not even been started yet. The issue of whether the internet would hold up in a pandemic is real but should not stand in the way of creative use of this kind of media for cooperative efforts.
Even though the number of online flu resources are increasing, what is lacking IMHO is more localized or more sector-specific networking cooperative efforts, such as county or state level blogs or wikis, or faith-based or industry-based ones. I raised this question at one of the National Academies Disasters Roundtable meetings on citizen engagement, whether it might be a useful thing to have a 'pandemic of wikis' to meet those needs. http://dels.nas.edu/dr/docs/dr18/Chu.pdf
Bad idea. Three words-- infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. If that goes down because employees can't show up, then all this high-end Internet based stuff is dead.
Daland: That doesn't make it a bad idea. There are lots of contingencies that could make any plan worthless. That doesn't mean you shouldn't plan. It means you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket, have a back up, etc. I doubt the internet or the power grid will go down, at least globally. It could get choked in the last mile or an ice storm could put power out in the northeast, but the whole shebang won't go down in my view.
I think you have to plan for a range of consequences and not just think of the worst case. It's nihilistic, not realistic.
' Lots of good ideas here. You can't be too prepared. However tt is important to keep the threat in perspective and not let it get overblown like Y2K was. On the other hand the reason there were so few Y2K problems was due to the intensive preparations and upgrades that were done in advance. Most that do not work in IT are not aware of the hugh preparations that were made and easily dismiss it as a non event. A good site with a free planning guide is at: http://www.pandemicinfosite.com
Another method of comm is satellite phones. The satellites will be fine in space for the time that we need them with little positioning changes. That hooked to a computer modem can uplink, then downlink directly. It aint the internet but at least you'll be talking...Albeit at about a buck a minute. LONGLINES with the phone companies provide 800 service and upper level frequencies for DSL and other stuff. I am sure that they are making preps to use all of the military lines as well. Face it. As long as you can pick up the cell phone and/or the telephone and complain about bird flu or hit it on the internet, even with a mild wait no one is going to get too nervous and jerky. Line maintenance will be the problem and I am not even sure what that entails anymore since everything is so maintenance free.
Uhm-I think though carrier pigeons will be out of service too.
Anyone old enough to remember WWII, or DARPANet, expects the various militaries to commandeer the internet, cable, phone, broadcast, and print media.. and probably they will discourage gossip with extreme prejudice.
That doesn't mean they will try. Nor that they will be able if they do. But they have reputations to maintain.
It does means you should use the obvious existing networks for as long as you can, to get and to give as much information as you can. It does mean that you should attach to many other networks, especially local networks.
People who live in urban areas could join (or set up) WIFI networks. There are already geeks figuring out how to relink the continent, using protocols similar to those of the original distributed internet and UUCP. Coverage could be quite complete if enough local networks exist. That is if enough people have both participated in the wifinets and also kept their computers powered.
Great.
Another important public health policy paper I can't read because it is published in science.
:(
Yeh, sorry I got a little aggro in my previous comment. I have kept my land line "just in case" though it costs $50 a month and I have trouble using the line in any kind of inclement weather. My point was that I don't trust my Internet (cable) provider to maintain my connection to the Internet during a pandemic (because of the surge conditions and also because of a breakdown in the repair services, etc. due to illnesses.)
I think the more interesting use of social networking during pandemic would be sites like Second Life. IBM has already begun doing business and holding meetings there. It wouldn't be a bad investment for other organizations to at least experiment with using virtual worlds as an alternative during severe disruptions. Yes, it sounds a bit far-fetched and it relies on the Internet to be up and functioning. But it may be as realistic as some of the existing plans that make assumptions about the viability of our physical infrastructure.
Eric: Funny you should mention it. I have been thinking about it, too. What a great place to have a pandemic to see how people react to various scenarios. I actually have an avatar there and have started to explore a little but it seems more a young folks game and I will need help. Of course we can't infect people there except maybe on a private island but the idea of doing a huge tabletop MMRPG in virtual space is interesting.
I also suggested to my Flu Wiki partners we open a FW office there but we are all too old to do that. You interested in trying?
Of course you put your finger on a problem in an actual pandemic. Not only does the internet have to be functioning but you need a shitload of bandwidth. You can't do it on dial-up or even with PCs or Macs from just a few years ago. You need a fast processor and a lot of RAM. So it seems it is more useful for prepandemic planning. What are your thoughts?
reveres and Eric, take a read of the LATimes article on Second Life. The fact that there are no real world consequences for the players skews the results.
FWIW-another program is out there that the military uses to table top exercises with. Its very much like Second L. but there are consequences on screwing up on that one. I would expect that they are using it now to try to come up with the fixes for BF. With this though and Second L. it really comes down to what the goals are. If the goals are set low then you get the weirdness of S.L., if its set high and the goals maintain order, keep everyone fed and the infrastructure running it likely is something worth modeling.
I brought this up with the bird flu progression models from last year. Started off with green and white on the maps. Green being populated areas, white not. As it progressed the green gave way to yellow, orange, red and then back to orange, yellow and finally green with the same white areas depicted. In effect they showed only cases but no fatalities. That was one of the little nuance things thats the devil in the details. Those red areas would open up to more "white" areas as there were no people there any longer. It could also be modified of course to accomodate the dead as a black area showing a casualty but they couldnt do any of that until the CFR's on the P, S and T waves actually manifested themselves.
I believe the JPL in Pasadena created it and its out there for public use. Using that and a S.L. integration you could really put something together that would scare just about anyone to death with all of the possibilities.
I had to look up "TPTB"... it's tough getting old.(ITGO?)
We did a little focus group prior to begining our pandemic planning. One of the things people told us was that they didn't trust big media. They much prefer local outlets. So we are working to build a relationship with a local radio station, give them exclusive access to our inforamtion, in return for air time.
But it is largely one-way communication, the web is preferable, except for the limitation noted already.
drd
Not "the web". A web.
Research almost always shows that the best networks show strong local connectivity, with some thick trunks, plus relatively sparse and apparently random distant connections.
Consider natural evolution.. mostly stable, with randomness, both small -scale and large-.