Exercises vs Real Events: Caribe Wave, ShakeOut and Real Earthquakes in Social Media

Date: 4/25/2019

Time: 11:15 AM

Room: Vashon

The Puerto Rico Seismic Network (PRSN) monitors and studies seismicity in the Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands Region (PR/VI). Within this region, thousands of earthquakes are located per year of which dozens are felt by the community. The most significant earthquake that affected the region occurred in 1918 and generated a destructive tsunami. PRSN coordinates two annual exercises, Caribe Wave and ShakeOut, in the PR/VI region. The Caribe Wave exercise in March promotes tsunami preparedness, and the Great Puerto Rico ShakeOut exercise in October promotes earthquake preparedness. For both exercises, the PRSN has developed a communications exercise in coordination with emergency agencies of PR/VI as well as an educational campaign that involves users of Social Media. One of the biggest challenges facing PRSN is the immediate need of the public for bilingual (Spanish and English) information and the standardization of social networks as a primary information source for event information. Here we present a comparison of PRSN’s Facebook page and the official webpage performance for the two annual drills and major or significant earthquakes in PR/VI during 2018. Concerns such as how to reach people, knowing their expectations about our work, quantifying the reach and impact that our publications and exercises have on the community and emergency managers are now part of our daily operations and protocols. Other challenges while working with social media is the dissemination of false information by other users, damage to scientific credibility, establishment of official information sources, among others. Given the wide variety of technology consumption our protocols are designed to issue information on many platforms that reach both emergency agencies and the general public of the countries in PR/VI. Furthermore, a dynamic approach to protocol design will ensure prolonged impact on the population through any of the social media platforms.

Presenting Author: Gisela Báez-Sánchez

Authors