RESCUER News: A public communication Tool for Crisis

Situations

Jorge Pereira Filho Renato Novais Vaninha Vieira

Fraunhofer Project Center at Bahia Federal Institute of Federal University of Bahia
UFBA (FPC-UFBA) Education, Science and (UFBA)
Parque Tecnolgico da Bahia, Technology (IFBA) Rua Baro de Jeremoabo, s/n
121 R. Emdio dos Santos, s/n Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil vaninha@ufba.br
Salvador, Bahia, Brazil
jorge.pereira@fpc.ufba.br renato@ifba.edu.br
Manoel Mendona Karina Villela
Federal University of Bahia Fraunhofer IESE
(UFBA) Fraunhofer-Platz 1, 67663
Rua Baro de Jeremoabo, s/n Kaiserslautern, Germany
P.O. Box 5000 karina.villela@iese.fraunhofer.de
manoel.mendonca@ufba.br

ABSTRACT in managing the crisis and when we refer to necessity of

Crisis management involves, among other tasks, establishing
a good communication strategy with involved parties to keep
everyone informed about the incident situation, avoiding pa-
nic or misguidance. A challenge is to filter the relevant infor-
mation, considering different parties needs, and to provide it
at the right time through the right communication channel.
Existing public communication solutions are designed thin-
king in the disclosure of a single message to a general public.
Allowing customized messages is fundamental in crisis com-
munication due to the variability of message contents for dif-
ferent audiences. This paper presents the RESCUER News
system, our tool for context-aware public communication
in crisis management called , allowing (semi-)automatically
customized messages targeted to different users by different
communication channels. We focus on emergencies that oc-
cur in the scenario of industrial areas.
Keywords
Context-Awareness; Crisis Management; Public Communi-
cation; Risk Communication; RESCUER
1. INTRODUCTION
A crisis has as one of its characteristics being a random
event and totally-unexpected. Despite this, it presents pat-
terns that can help communicators to anticipate problems
and be able to give an immediate response [1]. Basically,
the term crisis communicationis used in two ways: when
we refer to communication between organizations involved
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the emergency management to inform and alert the public
about the emergency [1]. The latter definition fits best the
scope of our work, being developed considering to minimize
the challenges faced by communicators while performing this
task.
Several studies have been conducted to propose good com-
munication principles [8][1][4], among which we can highlight
the same basic principles: be first (for the public the first
source is the most reliable); be right (accuracy establishes
credibility); be credible (honesty and truthfulness are essen-
tial during an crisis); communicate repeatedly (whenever
possible, keep the public informed); and communicate by
different tools, media and communication channels (never
trust on a single method of communication).
Our work, considers all concepts, principles and best prac-
tices described previously to develop its public communica-
tion solution called RESCUER News. It aims to support
customised communication of the incident and its conse-
quences targeted to a proper audience. Existent solutions
are designed, mostly, thinking in the disclosure of a single
message to a general public. However, allowing customized
messages is fundamental in crisis management due existing
variability of message content for different target audiences
(e.g., press, public authorities and civilians).
This solution is being developed inside of a larger rese-
arch project named RESCUER1 a joint Brazil-Europe
initiative, involving nine research and industry organizati-
ons in four countries (Brazil, Austria, Germany and Spain).
RESCUER aims at developing an interoperable solution to
support command centers in quickly managing emergencies,
based on reliable and intelligent analysis of crowdsourcing
information mashed up with open data.
The objectives of this research are: 1) to identify public
communication challenges coming up in an emergency; 2)
to elicit existing users and contextual information needs in
an emergency; 3) to define the relevant information adap-
tation according to different target audiences and phases of
1
Rescuer Project - http://www.rescuer-project.org
an emergency; and 4) to implement this context-aware ap-
proach in our RESCUER News systems. The novelty is to
support (semi-)automatic customized communication of the
incident targeted to different audiences.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses
related works. Section 3 presents our approach for context-
aware public communication in crisis situations, targeted to
different audiences. Section 4 presents a proof of concept for
our proposal implemented in the RESCUER News system.
Finally, Section 5 presents conclusions and future work.
2. RELATED WORK
In this section, we discuss some existing solutions for pu-
blic communication.
The Twitter Alerts2 provides, for authorities, a new way
to disseminate information about an emergency. The crisis
reports are disseminated via SMS and tweets, with a specific
visual identity. To receive such notifications, the Twitter
users must subscribe to this service. This solution is a means
of message dissemination in large scale. However, it does not
support generating or sending messages to specific people in
specific areas.
The Google Public Alerts3 is a platform to disseminate
relevant emergency alerts to users when and where they are
searching for. The users are warned by: a) automatic re-
ports sent through Google Now, and b) customized search
results when the user is looking for the situation of a specific
emergency in the Google search engine.
The Cell Broadcast Emergency Alerts is a communica-
tion channel where messages can be issued to people in a
specific area [5]. To receive reports, the users mobile de-
vice must support the technology and the cell phone pro-
vider should make the cell broadcast infrastructure availa-
ble. Unlike SMS, solutions based on cell broadcast are free
of network congestion, since such messages use an exclusive
channel. There are government applications being developed
for emergency communication using cell broadcast [3][2].
Developed by the Israeli government, the National Mes-
sage solution [9] aims to establish a nationwide warning
system that disseminates selective alerts and guidance mes-
sages to the population in real time, based on immediate
control of all available and relevant channels in Israel.
Alerts4All [6] is a project developed in cooperation by 12
European partners. Its goal is to create a complete commu-
nication framework for public alerts. It supports authorities
during the preparation of emergency messages and provides
a specific communication protocol to transmit such messa-
ges.
Existing solutions are designed thinking only in the dis-
semination of public statements, without distinguishing the
need for information of each of the public who need infor-
mation about the emergency. Our solution aims to cover
the whole process of communication with the public during
an emergency. In addition, we enable emergency managers
create relevant communiques to each of the public profiles
(eg civil, political, press or other organizations) in a process
with only 4 steps.
3. CHALLENGES IN CROWD COMMUNI-
CATION FOR CRISIS MANAGEMENT
2 4
Twitter Alert - https://about.twitter.com/products/alerts
3 5
Google Public Alerts - https://www.google.org/publicalerts
Figure 1: RESCUER News General Overview
Some principles are essential for effective communication
with the public during emergencies [1][4][7]: Communicate
repeatedly; Be clear (use simple language and do not use te-
chnical terms, statistics or probabilities); Communicate by
different tools, media and communication channels (never
trust on a single method of communication); Transmit con-
sistent information; Provide only relevant information. The
challenge here is to follow these principles in an unpredicta-
ble and stressful situation as it is a crisis situation.
The goals of this work are aligned to the challenges in
crowd communication. In order to reach the first three goals
(elicit existent users, the contextual information needs and
define the relevant information adaptation according to dif-
ferent target audiences and different phases of an emergency)
we conducted a workshop with real end users to learn from
their experience how public communication occurs, in prac-
tice, during an emergency. Participated in this workshop
representatives from two partner organizations in the RES-
CUER project: Camacari Industrial Development Commit-
tee (COFIC) (Brazil)4 and FireServ (Austria)5 . Both orga-
nizations have large experience in dealing with emergency
situations in industrial parks. We wanted to guarantee that
our solution was valid in both regions. The workshop was
guided aiming to answer the following questions: i) What
are the types of users presented in an emergency situation,
and what users should be considered for public communica-
tion? ii) What is the relevant information to be presented for
each type of user in a public communication? and iii) How
the information presentation should be adapted, considering
the different phases in an emergency?
Regarding Question i), the end-users in our workshop
agreed with the following types of users for public com-
munication of emergencies in industrial parks: Employee;
Visitor; Neighbor Community; Environmental Department;
Politician; and Press.
In the workshop, on answering Question ii), they agreed
that the following set of information is relevant in industrial
parks: Incident Location, Incident Type, Occurrence Time,
COFIC - http://www.coficpolo.com.br
FireServ - http://www.fireserv.at
Figure 2: User Interface for defining the basic infor-
mation of the emergency
Consequences (e.g. physical, material, financial), Providen-
ces taken to control the Emergency, Status of the Emer-
gency, Injured People, Number of Fatalities, Schedule of
press conferences, and Type of chemical released. Yet for
Question ii) and also for Question iii), we asked them to
indicate how we should consider information adaptation to
different users (which information is relevant for each type of
user) and to different phases of an emergency. Summarizing
our findings: the end-users agreed that Press and Politician
have the same set of relevant information. Similarly, Visitor,
Neighbor Community and Employee share the information
needs.
4. RESCUER NEWS
The RESCUER News system was designed considering
the reduction of effort of emergency dispatchers in public
communication. Figure 1 shows an overview of our solution.
The solution starts requesting to the RESCUER Emer-
gency Response Toolkit (ERTK) the current information
about the emergency context. This information is used to
find the best model that fits in the current situation of the
emergency.
Next, the user sets the model as needed and makes adjust-
ments to post the message. After these steps, the system
generates messages in specific formats for each of the chosen
communication channels, and delivers them to the chosen
target audience. More details about each step are described
in the next sections.
4.1 Basic Informations
Once started, RESCUER News search for information
about the current situation of the emergency, such as, the
current phase of emergency (emergency status), the type
of the emergency, occurrence time, the name of the affected
company (incident location), number of injuries or fatalities.
All such information is obtained from the RESCUER so-
lution. Information about the emergency type and current
phase (if existent) are used to search the best model. Then,
the user chooses the target groups and the communication
channels to be used.
The Figure 2 presents the user interface for defining the
Emergency Context, the pre-selected information, based on
confirmed information coming from the RESCUER, are mar-
ked with a red flag. On this step, the user selects the target
groups and the respective communication channels.
4.2 Message creation and customization
Figure 4: User Interface for free edition of messages
per target group
The next step starts with the system generating the appro-
priate model that best fits the current emergency phase, type
and target groups. The system generates a form (Figure 3),
based on pre-defined templates, considering the principles
of a user interface design pattern called Natural Language
Form (NLF)6 . The choice of using NLF was motivated by
its high acceptance by experts, who claimed that it is more
friendly than responding to a traditional form7 .
To distinguish exclusive content to a particular target au-
dience, we highlight the sentences using different colors. In
Figure 3, general sentences are highlighted in gray while spe-
cific sentences for press and politicians are in green.
After the emergency dispatcher answers the form, the
system generates complete messages (for dissemination of
public communications by Website and Email), for each
stakeholder (Politicians, Press and Environmental Depart-
ment) and generates a short message to the communica-
tion channels that require simple communications (Google
Alerts, SMS or RESCUER Mobile Crowdsourcing Solution(mobile
solution developed inside of RESCUER Project)). Then, the
user pass to the customization screen of the public commu-
nications. In this screen, the emergency dispatcher can edit
messages sent to each stakeholder. The developed interface
for performing these tasks can be seen in Figure 4.
In the customization of public communications screen, it is
also possible to record audio messages. The disclosure com-
municated by audio was an option chosen by the consultant
expert to allow the execution of public communication in
radios (as attachments in email messages) and in the RES-
CUER Mobile Crowdsourcing Solution for people who have
difficulty to reading.
4.3 Send Settings
Figure 5 shows the user interface to set sending options.
In the left side of this screen the emergency dispatcher can
select from a mailing list, previously registered and grouped
by type of stakeholder (e.g., press, politicians and environ-
mental department). On the right side, it is set to send the
notifications to specific areas (neighboring communities or
specific regions of the previously registered industrial park)
or sending to all users regardless their location.
4.4 Formatting and Dissemination of the Pu-
blic Communication Messages
6
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2013/05/21/natural-
languageform-with-custom-input-elements/
7
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1007
 Figure 3: User Interface for Assisted Edition of Public Communication models
Figure 5: User Interface for audience selection
After the definition of content of the message and of yours
target groups the system start an automatic process of for-
matting of each generated message. This process is neces-
sary because the different communication channels requires
that the messages be in specific formats.
The message generated by the system (with result of the
previous steps) is in HTML format, however, according to
the communication channel, the format of the message must
be converted to the following formats: Simple Text (SMS
and Social Networks), Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)
(Google Public Alert) and JSON (Rescuer APP).
In Figure 1, this process is represented for the Message
Dispatcher module where one can see the relationship of
message formats and each communication channel.
5. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER WORKS
Public communication is a key step on crisis management
and helps involved people and organizations handling crisis
situations. A key point is to guarantee that the right people
will receive the relevant information they need in the right
time.
In this paper, we presents our solution for public commu-
nication during a crisis situation. Our tool is called RES-
CUER News and was developed with the object of help the
public communication team on task of preserve or win the
publics confidence during a crisis.
The RESCUER News allow the construction (semi-) au-
tomatic of messages, with informations relevance to different
profiles of publics. Furthermore, our tool possibility the dis-
semination of this messages through different communica-
tion channels.
As next steps in our research, we will extend the scenario
to large scale events, conclude the implementation of RES-
CUER News and integrate our solution to the communica-
tion process of the partner institutions in order to validate
our work.
6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by the RESCUER project, fun-
ded by the European Commission (Grant: 614154) and by
CNPq/MCTI (Grant: 490084/2013-3), and by the FPC-
UFBA, a joint initiative of Fraunhofer Society and UFBA,
with support from the Bahia State Government.
7. REFERENCES
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[3] FCC. Federal communications commission:wireless
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[4] D. C. Glik. Risk communication for public health
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[5] One2Many. Cell broadcast emergency alert, 2012.
[6] C. Parraga Niebla, J. Muna, S. Grazzini, and
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International Conference on Public Alert and Social
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