KPBS - How a small Public TV/Radio Station served its public - Part 1 - The technology

On PEI, we are just recovering from an Ice storm that had over 1/3 of all the province without power for days. Bad weather events seem to be hitting communities regularly now. If it's not a drought, it's a flood. If it's not an ice storm, it's a bridge collapse.  Bad social events are more common as well. It's not just in Baghdad where people are randomly killed. Universities and schools can be battle grounds,.

The issue that is emerging is how does a community keep everyone informed in a timely way when bad things happen? As a University President how can you warn all your students and staff in minutes of a risk?

How also can those who are responsible for emergency services find out from the "front line" what is going on? On PEI, finding out where the key breaks in the lines were took days. At Washington State, it took hours to find out that the shooter was still at large and where he was.

I think that the story of how KPBS covered the fire last year in California can help us all find answers to these questions. The story is only partly to do with technology.

The station stripped everything off their front page to provide a clear focus on the ONE Story that affected everyone. Key points being a Google Map and Twitter.

The Google Map became the core of the hosted space by KPBS where the community contributed to creating an accurate assessment of what was happening by sending pictures & reports into the Station staff who then posted the updates to the map. Because all could contribute, because you could add not only symbols, but pictures and text, a rich and deep picture could emerge.

Imagine of we had had such a map on PEI last week. People could have searched around their area and found the breaks. If some had been isolated, they could have been found and pin pointed. If the Community Centres that had generators had access to the web - the information could have been played back to all. If your school had a shooter, a picture of the campus could also be assembled. In England last year during the flood, Google Maps became essential for all concerned.

Here is the BBC map for Berkshire at one point - showing how contributors can add vital detail.

The other tool that was found to be especially helpful was Twitter.

Twitter is deceptively simple - it allows a person/station to send out 140 character bulletins that "readers" can subscribe too and receive the item either on their computer or on their cell phone. It enables all in this group to share their own items as well. So In the case of the fire, you could Twitter into the group that your street was going up in flames, or the centre could say that your community was about to be evacuated, or that water and supplies were on their way.

Cell phones in this emergency environment become the most important tool - the most important aspect of cell phones is their ability to use text. It seems that even in extremis text can get through.

Update - In this kind of emergency - Mobile Phones are now the main link - here is a great post by Debi Jones on how this is playing out:

The disastrous fires burning in San Diego have initiated a service used by the city and county government to inform and update residents. Mandatory evacuation orders have been communicated via reverse 911 on both landline phones and mobile phones. The messages are prerecorded and as I’ve said, three messages have been received on my phone. The first was an evacuation order. The next message was a notice that San Diego schools are closed until further notice along with the instruction to keep children inside and restrict their activity levels (smoke and ash is so thick in the air that keeping it out of your house is impossible during large fires). The third message was information on evacuation centers that were still open as several are already full.

Regulation in the US for Enhanced 911 or emergency service which incorporates location data has resulted in a number of emergency related services that are unique to the US market when compared to other geographical regions like Western Europe or Asia. The reverse 911 system isn’t specifically a mobile service, but that it does include mobile phones is impressive and to see this system work in the case of a disaster saving time and lives is an important development. To this point, 262,000 households have received reverse 911 calls.

It is likely in a very bad situation that cell phone networks will get jammed - what we are learning though is that SMS tends to get through - so Twitter as a feed may be the core of a good plan

Advisories have been announced on CNN and local San Diego TV stations asking people to limit their mobile phone use as the networks are saturated. This is a common problem during emergencies as we’ve seen over and over. The one component that continued to provide communication during the London bombings, post Katrina flooding in New Orleans and now in San Diego is text messaging. Twice today my mobile calls have been rejected with the network reporting, “all circuits are busy”. And yet, I’ve continued to be able to send out SMS.

Here I see a use for Facebook. A University could ask all its students to join a group called Emergency. In the event of an emergency, the President's office can use Facebook to send text messages to all that subscribe. In minutes most of the students would have the news.

Julie the UFIT instructor in Summerside used this aspect of Facebook to keep in touch with her class during the power outage on PEI - here is a message that was received with glee by her customers

Julie Arsenault sent a message to the members of UFIT Summerside.

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(no subject)

Ufit has THE POWER!!!!

Hey Ufiters, YES there is class tonight... so come and warm up with us at ufit.
No worries... we have showers... haha

See you all tonight

Julayyy
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None of these tools cost money. They have been proven to work. So why aren't we all piling in to get ready to use them? I think the answer is "Culture". The barrier to having an outstanding Communications support for emergencies is not technical. It is culture. Most organizations seem to be blocked.

So I called Deanna MacKey at KPBS to find out from her how KPBS overcame these cultural barriers and became the exemplar for how to really serve the public in an emergency.

Update - GG has left an excellent comment here that draws on his 25 years of experience as a Telephone engineer and adds a lot more practical advice about  what to do to keep in touch in an emergency - Thanks GG

Comments

[gg]

(Telephone systems engineer here, @ 25 years in the field.)

About the relative strengths & weaknesses of various communications means:

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Text messages are the modern equivalent of telegrams in all ways, right down to the modified language usage that includes frequent abbreviations and altered grammar to shorten messages. Once you understand that point, it becomes clear why text works when voice does not: much lower bandwidth, much lower demand on switching resources. Yes, that thing in your pocket is a telegraph. Neat, eh?

Voice information requires more bandwidth than text, still pictures require even more, moving pictures (videos & animations) require even more. Email that consists of text only requires little bandwidth; graphics, formatted text, and attachments require more.

Thus a general rule for emergency communications is, use low-bandwidth, low-switching-intensiveness modes of communication where possible.

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The enthusiasm for cellphones should be balanced by an understanding of their limitations, in the context of the strengths and limits of communications infrastructure generally.

Cellphones obviously work where storms etc. have taken down landlines. However, cellphone transmission sites are also served by landlines, so if those lines go down, so does cell service. Cell transmission sites also require the AC mains power to be operational, and have limited backup batteries. Thus, in a regional power failure, cellphone service is also likely to go down in a matter of hours. Cellphones themselves are "local battery telephones" (remember the old wooden wallphone with the crank on the side and two dry cells in the box?); all local battery devices have limited standby time and limited talk time.

Landlines are susceptible to cable outages. However, underground cable networks are far more robust than overhead or aerial cables. In other words, if your phone lines are buried, good; if they're on telephone poles, not so good. Landlines of the "POTS" variety (Plain Oldfashioned Telephone Service) operate on "central battery," where power is provided by the telco central office which in turn is backed up by a diesel generator with a week to a month worth of fuel on hand at all times. Thus landlines are more robust in emergencies that do not take down the outdoor cables.

The exception is VOIP and digital phone service of the types that are usually sold as combined voice, data, and TV service, e.g. "Comcast cablemodem" and suchlike. These are local battery services that depend on the AC mains at your house and have backup batteries that are only good for a couple of hours. This type of service is frankly the worst of both worlds and IMHO shouldn't be allowed as the only service in residences: there should always be a requirement for a conventional landline with central battery power.

Also, the robustness of landlines is lost if all you have are cordless phones. You need to have at least one oldschool wired phone in the house, e.g. the North American "type 2500 set" or equivalent (available cheaply at flea markets and on Ebay).

However, a cordless phone is safer to use than a wired phone during a lightning storm, so in areas subject to lightning, having at least one cordless phone avaialble is a good idea.

The issue of switching system overload is variable but generally cellphones are more vulnerable because the cell towers (transmission sites) are "concentrators" with limited "trunking" back to the actual switch; thus a localized high demand condition can saturate the local towers' trunks and result in an inability to get through.

Aside from that issue, the switches that connect calls in both cellular and landline networks are all built for the same traffic load, typically based on a maximum of 10% of the local subscribers making or receiving calls at the same time. Thus in a sudden emergency, when a large number of subscribers attempt to make calls at once, those in excess of 10% of the number of lines in the system will face delays in getting dial tone.

NOTE: the thing to do if this happens to you is, just wait patiently with the phone to your ear until you have a dial tone, and then dial the number you wish to reach. Do not jiggle the switch-hook up and down, do not try dialing without a dial tone, doing any of those things will just put you further back in the queue. It may take a minute or more to get a dial tone but you will get faster results by just waiting patiently. Similarly, with cellphone service, though the user interface is less user friendly.

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In summary, one size does not fit all.

The best approach for a person living in a vulnerable region is to have both a POTS line (with both a wired phone and a cordless phone) and a cellphone. Keep the cellphone battery fully charged at all times, and keeping a couple of fully charged backup batteries is also a smart idea. If you have to have cablemodem for your internet service, get a POTS line anyway.

In an emergency, change your voicemail greetings on both landline and cellphone, so that each greeting gives out both numbers. For example, "This is Bob, you've reached my cellphone on 555-1234. While I am at home the cellphone is turned off and you can reach my landline at 555-9876. In any case please leave a message and be sure to include your phone number. (beep!)"

That's all for now:-)

[AdamW]

Great info and content ... but if you're going to be a media critic, I believe you have to be able to differentiate between "its" and "it's" - especially in headlines. But this error is rampant, so don't take it personally.

[Robert Paterson]

Those pesky apostrophes - Of course as a blogger I have no editor to catch my mistakes before my readers do - thanks Adam I will change it
Rob

[Steve]

As a San Diego based blogger and former Pacific Bell employee I enjoyed reading the post and the systems engineer's follow-up comment.