Disaster responseWhen disaster-response apps fail

By Nicholas Kman

Published 12 August 2016

When a terrorist struck Nice, France, on 14 July, a new French government app designed to alert people failed. Three hours passed before SAIP, as the app is called, warned people in and around Nice to the danger on the city’s waterfront during Bastille Day festivities. This aspect of the tragedy highlights an emerging element of disaster preparation and response: the potential for smartphone apps, social media sites, and information technology more broadly to assist both emergency responders and the public at large in figuring out what is happening and what to do about it. Sadly, disasters will keep occurring. But the future is bright for improved communication when they happen. It’s even possible that someday smartphones may be able to monitor the environment automatically and contribute to disaster alert systems on their own.

Nicholas Kman, Ohio State University // Source: osu.edu

When a terrorist struck Nice, France, on 14 July, a new French government app designed to alert people failed. Three hours passed before SAIP, as the app is called, warned people in and around Nice to the danger on the city’s waterfront during Bastille Day festivities.

This aspect of the tragedy highlights an emerging element of disaster preparation and response: the potential for smartphone apps, social media sites, and information technology more broadly to assist both emergency responders and the public at large in figuring out what is happening and what to do about it.

A group I am in, with researchers from varied disaster-response backgrounds (including military, urban, wilderness and hospital service), has surveyed what’s already available on the market and found smartphone apps that can help providers and the public alike. Some help medical professionals deal with ordinary day-to-day work, viewing guidelines and medication databases, performing calculations, remotely monitoring patients’ vital signs and displaying radiology images. Others can help responders deal with chemical, biological, radioactive, nuclear and explosive disasters, which is useful for members of FEMA teams like the one I’m on. Apps for the public help them prepare for disasters, notify them of imminent problems, reconnect them with family members, and even help keep track of pets during emergencies.

But as the failure of the French app during the Nice attack illustrates, communication is almost always a problem during disasters – no matter what kind of problem it is: weather-related, an attack of some kind or even just a power outage. Effective communication, such as an evacuation alert as a hurricane approaches, can save lives. Unfortunately, as we saw during Hurricane Katrina, disasters can themselves cause damage resulting in communications breakdowns. This problem is best solved by emergency planners using the same strategy individuals figured out for themselves in Nice: create multiple independent systems to ensure connectivity.

Planning for redundancy
In disasters, many emergency responders already anticipate communication failure and employ multiple systems. Hospitals, for example, handle most communication with paging systems and in-building intercoms. If those go down, doctors, nurses and other staff can reach each other on their cellular phones. Should those fail, many hospitals keep closets full of radios charged and ready for use.