Repertoires of collaboration: incorporation of social media help requests into the common operating picture

ABSTRACT

Disasters present us with dynamic and emergent multi-stakeholder scenarios. Complex decision-making is supported by Emergency Management Organisation (EMO) ‘command and control’ disaster response systems that if pushed to failure, present problems in the development and monitoring of situational awareness. Nowhere is this more evident than when the general public use social media platforms to report crisis incidents when the official emergency management hotline (e.g. Triple Zero (000) in Australia) is overwhelmed or not available. This causes a number of issues for EMO as it is difficult to verify and determine the accuracy and veracity of social media posts and how to best incorporate the information within them into situational awareness for the assessment of and response to, an emergency incident. This paper analyses interview data from five Australian EMO that outlines and discusses these issues in detail. As a result of this analysis, we suggest that developing a supplementary ‘repertoires of collaboration’ approach to incorporating social media posts into the development of situational awareness during a disaster event, would help improve disaster response outcomes. We then recommend a way forward through the application of the Negotiated Arrangements for the Common Operating Picture (COP) in Extreme Events framework.