scaling 911 messaging for emergency operation centers during large scale events
TRANSCRIPT
Scaling 911 Messaging for Emergency Operation Centers
During Large Scale EventsAndrea Tapia1, Nick Giacobe1, Nick LaLone1 and Pamela Soule2
The Pennsylvania State University1College of Information Sciences and Technology
2Office of Emergency Management
Texting to 911?Public Service Answering Points (PSAPs)– Brittle– Co-opt TDD – 1:1– when you cannot safely call”
• Domestic abuse• Kidnapping
What happens when people start texting 911in large scale disasters?
Emergency ManagerEMs are Disaster Planners– Situation Awareness–Planning–Resources– Scale• Scale over time
–Text to 911 increase situation awareness?
The EOC
Disaster Coordination Centers–Multi-Agency–Cross-Jurisdictional–Federal, State, County, Local-level
The EOC is not the PSAPPSAP – Public Service Answering Point
or 911 Center EOC – Emergency Operations Center
Proxy-Crisis Events
• Football games•Dance Marathon
Football• 100-125,000 per game• Large law enforcement
present– EMS (Alcohol, heat/weather
emergencies, pre-existing conditions)
– Fire Department• Riot potential• Alcohol• Existing Infrastructure
Dance Marathon• 700 People Dancing for 46 Hours
15,000 organizers• EMS incidents (exhaustion, injuries)• Police incidents• Crowd control and safety• Text Number for “problems and issues”
Tools - TAMEE• TAMEE - Text Analytics for Monitoring
Extreme Events–Designed for capture and display of twitter
tweets–Capture over long periods of time– Identify new trends, upcoming events,
problematic issues/concerns• Prototype for Text-to-911?
TAMEE – Components• Twitter Collection Agent• Frequency Chart•Word Cloud• Tops Lists• Tweet Display
TAMEE – Twitter Collection
• Must have advanced knowledge• keywords• geolocations
TAMEE – Frequency Chart
• Frequencies • 1, 4, 10, 24 hours• Detect “when”
911 Data in TAMEE
• What does 911 texting data look like in TAMEE?
• Can it be useful for EM/EOC functions?
Texts containing the word “drunk”
• People reporting problems with other fans
• Requesting medical assistance
• Redacted here:• Specific
Section/Row/Seat numbers
• Reporting person’s cell number
Discussion
• Changing habits difficult • low usage of texting to 911 in
both proxy events
Conclusion• Text-to-911 during a large scale
disaster will overload the PSAP• Overflow PSAPs won’t help• EOC Integration• Tools like TAMEE can improve
ability
Future Work
• Collect data from YikYak• Direct Feed from county 911
center (PSAP)
