014 Hashtags in Disasters

In 2014, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs funded a “Think Paper” about the use of new media in disasters. A subsequent meeting in Doha identified that standardisation of social media hashtags and enabling GPS during crisis could have major impact on integrating big-crisis data into emergency response going forward. Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook and other new media (including YouTube) are all in the mix, but it is twitter that is certainly the most immediate.

It is from that foundation that Roxanne Moore wrote “Hashtag standards for Emergencies” with Andrej Verity. I explore the research with Roxanne and the discuss the impact of the research. We reflect on the use of social media in emergency situations, such as the Mumbai bombings, Arab Spring and Philipine floods, and how to tranform tweets into usable information for responding and deploying emergency resources.

The publication “Hashtag standards for Emergencies” was developed by UN OCHA Field Information Services with the support of the OCHA Policy Development and Studies Branch (PDSB) and written by Roxanne Moore and Andrej Verity, with advice and support from Patrick Meier and Sarah Vieweg, from Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI).

About My Guest:

Roxanne has extensive experience in non-profit management across a variety of causes including children's education, emergency response, homelessness, and politics. In August 2011 I moved internationally to Bangkok, Thailand and, within two months of moving abroad she was evacuated from her apartment due to rising flood water. 

In August 2013 she began my Master in Public Health (MPH) in Global Epidemiology at Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH), Emory University, focusing on her interest at the intersection of Complex Humanitarian Emergencies and Data Science. She had previously worked with the CDC in innovative scientific reporting, as well as OCHA in social media policy standards and development of a nonprofit business proposal for the Digital Humanitarian Foundation. Her current role is Ebola Coordinator for the "Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN)"