Article Idea:
using social networks in disaster preparedness
suggested by jonathan soroko on 2008/06/28
I write and am active in community-based disaster preparedness; I’m also a consultant to the Disaster Accountability Project.
We’re trying to come up with ways of analyzing community structure to come up with networks – a la Paul Baran – which are redundant, self-repairing – and which don’t leave out any members with weak ties. (The elderly person who lives alone, etc.) The current FEMA model doesn’t even address this.
The problem extends, of course, beyond social networks to transportation energy and communications grids.
Don’t have a particular suggestion – but since I keep finding myself at Boxes and Arrows – I thought I’d post this and see if the problem(s) caught anyone’s attention.
Jon Soroko
http://popularlogistics.com
http://disasteraccountability.org
Want to see this idea turned into a story?
3 people said yes. | 0 people said no.
chuck kukla
23 Reputation points
Posted 2008/07/02 @ 08:08AM with
I think this idea is worthy of discussion and would be happy to contribute. Disaster Relief and Reconstruction is a particularly difficult area to get a handle on. How this can be modeled in way that can be useful before, during and after a disaster would provide valuable insight to any complex project effort. I’m working on a planning theory and approach that I think could contribute to the analysis and design of better systems and practices.
adrian Chan
0 Reputation points
Posted 2008/07/14 @ 11:58AM with
Jonathan,
Are you pursuing solutions on the ground, or (perhaps also) online? There are efforts to use socmedia tools like twitter during emergencies.
small point: weak ties are actually the most benecial in granovetter’s original args, for they’re the second deg ties that provide us with access to networks beyond our immediate (first) deg circles… An elderly living alone wld be called an isolate. ;-)