5-7 April 2017, Budapest
Key Correspondent - Laure Fallou, European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), France
Rémy Bossu and Laure Fallou from the EMSC team took part in the 2017 EENA (European Emergency Number Association) Conference in Budapest on 5-7 April 2017. Through a variety of activities, the conference provided very relevant findings in the context of CARISMAND project.
Good practices in managing Social Media during crisis were presented, such as tips for avoiding the spread of fake news and pictures of victims.Guidelines for an efficient communication on Social media by authorities and emergency services were shared. Findings from studies on citizens’ behaviour on Twitter were also presented by Nicolas Vanderbiest.
Some major tech companies also took part in the conference and gave speeches about their role in disaster management. Google, Facebook, and Twitter presented their tools for emergency management and particularly for crisis response, which are used both by citizens and disaster managers. Microsoft also presented some solutions used by disaster managers. Emerging companies such as AirBnb and Waze also shared experience on how they became recently aware of the utility of their services during crisis and how they could help.
During the conference debates on the best ways to alert the population took place, taking into account technological issues but also more cultural ones, such as language, targeting population with special needs, and the technological culture of the population. The relevance of developing smartphone apps for emergency management was also discussed, and it was stated that apps could be very useful but are not the “Holy Grail”. They should be launched only if there is a crucial need and lack of available efficient solution. It was agreed that apps must be designed in a way that they could to be used by a large range of the population.
Some EU projects dealing with emergency management and technologies presented their main findings (ANYWHERE, Concorde, INSPEC2T, SOTERIA, POP-ALERT, EmerGent, SecInCore and NEXES and others).
During his presentation, Rémy Bossu showed the importance of timely detection for earthquake risk reduction and explained how EMSC’s system works. He demonstrated the benefits of the development of the LastQuake smartphone app. The key findings from LastQuake developments within CARISMAND WP3.3 (implementation of the safety check and of the safety tips) were also presented.
Overall the conference provided a valuable opportunity to discuss cultural factors in disaster management and the use of technologies during all phases of a crisis. The EMSC Team shared some of the findings of CARISMAND project and enjoyed the networking opportunity to meet interesting actors, emergency managers, researchers, as well as tech companies and authorities’ representatives.
In 2018, EENA conference will be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia (27-29 April).
Follow EENA at: http://www.eena.org/
