CORRECTIONS.COM: Using Social Media to Protect Public Safety

It’s not easy to understand why anyone with a warrant would voluntarily surrender to law enforcement. But I spoke to many offenders during an event in the nation’s capitol who told me that they were looking for a safe opportunity to turn themselves in. They wanted another chance to return into normal society.

But they and family members needed to learn about the program and be convinced that it wasn’t a scam. We had to earn their trust. We did that through social and conventional media efforts. This may have been one of the first efforts on the part of a federal agency to use social media during a campaign.

SCOTT MORONEY: How Social Media Helps in Emergency Management Situations

Living in the Northeast of the United States, many people think they are prepared for anything and can weather any type of storm. Alas, I learned this past weekend even the mighty can be humbled. Parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire were struck with an ice storm that devastated trees and left nearly 500,000 homes without power, and cable, phone and Internet services for over one week in many cases. What is amazing is how unprepared most of all were in terms of basic needs.

WEB STRATEGY BY JEREMIAH: How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster Planning

This last Thanksgiving was marred by the horrible deaths of over 170 victims at Mumbai’s terrorist attack. If you weren’t watching, social media played a part in helping –and hurting– the event. First hand accounts were published on twitter, including pictures of terrorists in action, in fact Forbes called this Mumbai: Twitter’s Moment. Cities, authorities, states, and governments should have a social media plan in place to prepare for disasters of all sorts.

PRIVATE SECTOR DEVELOPMENT BLOG: Web 2.0 and disaster management

There's been quite a lot of attention in the media recently about the role of Web 2.0 in disaster management. Spurred by the Mumbai attacks, Jeremiah Owyang, a specialist in web strategy and social media, wrote an interesting article on "How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster Planning." (For a different but also fascinating take on what municipalities can achieve through the web, see "a city that thinks like the web").

And it's not just man-made disasters that are getting attention. Aftershock is a website entirely devoted to "the world’s first massively collaborative disaster simulation about a major earthquake affecting much of Southern California."