Disrupt Emergency Alert Systems?—?#brusselsattack

Again we were hit by major bombing events only a few months after Beirut and Paris. I experienced Madrid and London back in the days remotely and also today I saw it rather early when news hit Twitter and traditional channels. The learning of this morning and throughout the day is:

We must improve!
We still don’t do it right! 
We must target that part of our digital life once and for all!

When going through the day we will -as always- see the same pattern and the same results on what we do first and what we are looking for and to whom we reach out. Still it looks like it is too slow. Too much work needed to make the obvious things happen. So here is my list of things we need to get right. There will be another day and another event. We just need to get better at this. This times it wasn’t our friends, not our family. Still Brussels is for most of us far away. Not for me. Not for people living partly in a digital world. Next time it will be you, your friends and your family who will be impacted somehow. We need to do it right. We need to get prepared.

Reaching out to friends for a keep alive signal: I need a Ping!

First we contact the person we look for on a channel we believe he/she is most active on: could be Twitter, facebook, email, SMS, WhatsApp. We don’t send on all channels. If he doesn’t answer on Twitter when he is always on with Twitter he might be in trouble?—?or in a plane, a meeting or else. So send a post or a tweet on your favorite channel first. It would be great if there was a tool monitoring those activities. A website I could signup with my twitter account or a group i can be write only on WhatsApp. i send a Ping and those who want to know about me can find my signal and will be relieved. During the tsunami in Indonesia in 2006 a U.S. corporation opened up a conference call number and demanded employees to dial in to give a ping. Those not dialing in within 24h went to a list to be followed up for information.

Facebook has a great tool for this kind of signal sending?—?checking in you are alive. But this time it took ages to get it online. A lot of my contacts reached out to facebook employees requesting them to turn on the tool. Finally it came online roughly three hours after the news hit the wires. Too late my facebook friends. Get better at this. It is scary to know that a private company like facebook has the most efficient tool for disaster information management but we should be glad that there is such a tool.

Connectivity will be crucial even for Messengers: Hotspots need to be opened up!

In London on 7/7 police shut down cellular networks for a good reason, in Brussels today the networks saturated after three hours. PSTN is not an efficient technology for peak times?—?that is why we have All IP. Still mobile networks and cellular towers will reach a limit sooner or later. Therefore we need to open up fixed line services to support the high demand of number of devices seeking connectivity. WiFi hotspots will be the solution for people on the move looking for Internet connections. Fon opened up their network in Japan during the Tsunami and earthquakes to use its foneros for free during these days. In Brussels Telnet first and later on Proximus with Fon are opened up or tried to open up their hotspots. There is iPass, Boingo and thecloud with similar coverage of hotspots in areas like train stations and airports. Those networks need to be opened up immediately after events happen. It shouldn’t take hours to open up those networks for the hours after the event. Maybe we need to have people in their homes as well able to provide open access to their DSL lines at home who are near to such locations like metro stations and bars as we have seen in Brussels and Paris.

Giving shelter for those out on the street: #mydoorsareopen

This was a spring morning in Brussels and it was a summer morning in London when events happened. But Paris was at night and it was freezing. For those times people need shelter, warm clothing and a cup of tea. Most of all they need the feeling of being save under a roof of friendly people. Parisians opened their doors after the events in St. Denis. Twitter gave them directions where to ask for shelter and people opened their doors. Airbnb, Wimdu, Booking etc. do know places of shelter in their systems. They should try to reach out to their hosts requesting shelter from them?—?similar to hotspots building a central network of resources. It is up to each individual to open their doors but sending emails to hosts near by those events to ask for help would make a huge difference.

Another need for transportation was solved by people offering seats in their private cars at the end of the day when metro and public transport was still locked down. Today Brussel took the way via Twitter when people offered rides for others impacted by the situation around the city. Again services like Uber, Blabla and others would be asked to support to a link between driver and passenger.

Commodity ressources will become urgent needed resources

While we can discuss if Internet connectivity is commodity?—?we have seen people in need of cash, electricity and many more things we take for granted nowadays. Providing the basics will become a challenge during those events. Guiding people to places where to find those resources will make the difference. If we know that there are attacks going on we need to stay informed what areas to avoid?—?not to get in danger by ourselves but also to give room for emergency services. It would be good to have Google and Apple mapping those areas in their mapping services. A Waze for dangerous areas. We can pinpoint a vehicle on the road?—?but it is hard to define an area you shouldn’t be in during those hours. There should be a way to make this kind of tools working.

Police and official sources are the only trusted sources?—?how can we improve the noise canceling?

While we need to have a trusted flow of information the canceling of the noise during those events is a huge challenge. How can we separate the information from the irrelevant, advertising and misleading ones? While police is rather slow in a Twitter fast world their information is still most trusted among all other sources. Still the first news about metro station bombing came out from private people walking by or sitting at their windows. There needs to be consolidation of those news flows, that still remains the high speed and the trusted character of news. Maybe that is one of the biggest challenge.

Emergency services will need blood donations in the evening

Learning from the past we saw a need for blood donation by hospitals and emergency services. Not immediately during the event but in the days following those events to fill up their inventories. To make this need public and guide people to places where they actually can donate blood and other resources to those services should become more easier than it is today.

I am sure there will be more things we will think about.
All of them to achieve doesn’t sound difficult.
We need to start on this to do list?—?list items to be achieved and working to get things done.

Better now. Better today. 
Because next time it could be us looking for those items on our list.

If we believe in what we do and who we are?—?that is something we need to start working on.