POLICYFORUM
PUBLIC HEALTH
Web-based communication can provide
better reporting on disasters, coordination
of responses, dissemination of information,
and social networking to deliver resident-toresident assistance.
911.gov
Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece
hen individuals need
CRGs could be maintained
help for medical emerthrough user fees collected by
gencies or fires, most
Internet service providers. In
U.S. residents reach for their phones
smaller communities, CRGs
to dial 911. But when natural
could be run by trained voldisasters, public health threats, or
unteers with a few professionterrorist attacks occur that effect
als, much as volunteer fire dethousands of individuals or more,
partments now operate. Local
911 operators cannot handle all
911 phone centers have annual
the requests. Such disasters may
budgets of $200,000 to $3 milrequire massive coordination of
lion (13). A reasonable estipublic and private agencies, plus
mate is that adding 911.gov
cooperation from millions of
services would do no more than
citizens.
double these budgets.
Public use of Web-based
There are many challenges
social computing services, such
to be faced. We need to underas MySpace or Facebook, has A community response grid. Mockup of a World Wide Web page that supports reg- stand the norms and policies
spread to hundreds of millions of istering of households, reporting of incidents, requesting assistance, and responding that generate intense particiusers. This suggests that local, to requests.
pation in groups such as
state, and federal agencies could
the Wikipedia community
build community response grids (CRGs) reports and promptly recognize patterns. and some health support groups (14). Many
where residents could report incidents in sec- Civic leaders could disseminate information online communities fail, so we must learn
onds, receive emergency information, and on a street by street basis. A CRG would be what barriers reduce and what incentives
request resident-to-resident assistance. The most effective if it is used on a regular basis so create successful community interactions
current Internet and World Wide Web have that people know about it and develop closer in which privacy is respected (15). It will
proven effective for many purposes, but gov- community contacts. Such activities would be important to integrate with existing
ernment agencies have been slow to adopt build trust and increase social capital that will social networking sites and local community
social computing for national security, disas- be needed during major emergencies.
groups. However, developing a research
ter response, and emergency relief (1).
Some catastrophes destroy infrastructure, agenda, pilot testing, and phased implemenCRGs should be more than an emergency but in many situations, such as avian flu, tation could make CRGs a reality within 3
reporting service as already proposed (2). chemical and biological attacks, and tempera- to 5 years.
They should also be more than the U.S. ture extremes, do not. Even when there is
References
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) focused damage to communications infra1. Y. Kajitani, N. Okada, H. Tatano, Nat. Hazards Rev. 6, 41
Information Network (3), which focuses, like structure, the adjoining areas need to commu(2005).
some European (4) and Asian (5) initiatives, nicate to report and receive instructions.
2. 107th U.S. Congress, House Resolution 3353.
3. DHS Information Network, www.dhs.gov/xinfoshare/.
on networking for professionals. CRGs As the Internet matures, its reliability will
4. European Union, Community Research and Development
would not duplicate DHS’s CitizenCorps.gov, improve, and if disrupted it is more likely to be
Information Service, Emergency Response Grid,http://
which is designed to build local volunteer easily restored than phone services (6, 7).
cordis.europa.eu/ist/grids/emergency_response_grid.htm
5. Grid-Enabled Disaster Prediction and Emergency
groups for emergency response but doesn’t
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,
Response, www.gridatasia.net/content/view/44/70/
include online reporting or resident-to- local libraries helped to rebuild neighbor6. J. Cox, “Communicating even when the network’s down:
resident assistance.
hoods (8). After the Kobe earthquake (9),
Researchers seek disruption-tolerant nets” (2006),
www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111606-dtn.html
Community members (who would register British foot-and-mouth disease outbreak (10),
7. M. Turoff et al., J. Inf. Technol. Theory Appl. 5, 1 (2004).
in advance) could use Web-based computers, and Indonesian tsunami (11), resident collab8. E. L. Quarantelli, http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/
mobile devices, and cell phones to give and orations, Internet communications, and comQuarantelli (2005).
9. R. Shaw, K. Goda, Disaster 28, 16 (2004).
get text messages, photos, or videos. The site munity networks were effective in coordinat10. C. Hagar, thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,
would support coordination as emerging soft- ing local assistance, supplies, and information
IL (2005).
ware tools could enable agencies to integrate dissemination (12). An effective, regional model 11. M. Stephenson, Disasters 29, 337 (2005).
is Craigslist.com, which has tailored Web 12. C. Jones, S. Mitnic, (2006), www.firstmonday.org/issues/
issue11_5/jones/.
pages for all 50 U.S. states and 22 metropoli- 13. National Emergency Number Association, www.nena.org/.
B. Shneiderman was the founding director of the Humantan regions. The California Web pages already 14. D. Maloney-Krichmar, J. Preece, ACM Trans. Comput.Computer Interaction Laboratory and is a professor in the
Hum. Interaction 12, 201 (2005).
disseminate earthquake and weather informaDepartment of Computer Science, and J. Preece is profes15. J. Preece, Online Communities: Designing Usability and
sor and dean of the College of Information Studies,
tion, but have no reporting system.
Supporting Sociability (Wiley, New York, 2000).
University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
Just as 911 emergency phone services are
*E-mail: ben@cs.umd.edu or preece@umd.edu
run and funded locally by phone service fees,
10.1126/science.1139088
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16 FEBRUARY 2007
VOL 315
SCIENCE
www.sciencemag.org
CREDIT: TKTK
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