Last week, the Canadian Red Cross participated in a disaster response exercise called Trillium Resolve in order to test and improve Ontario's emergency response programs. The Red Cross participated in the exercise by opening shelters and assisting "victims" and tested their new sea cans to help deploy materials quickly in a disaster.
There was also an important social media component to the exercise to test the ability of responders to monitor social channels during a disaster. Patrice Cloutier of Crisis Comms Command Post tested the social media component of the exercise:
By trying to inject some contemporary reality into the exercise play, we were trying to do four things in relations to monitoring social networks:
- develop our ability to keep up with the volume of data we needed to keep an eye on (social and traditional media)
- increase our ability to identify social network injects which posed reputational threats or we calls for info or help
- determine what data could be analysed and transformed into solid intel for decision-making purposes and putting in place the channels to flow that info
- finally, validate the process for engagement/response
To read more on Patrice's findings and how the exercise played out on social media, you can read the rest of his post on the exercise in social media and emergency management here.