1. Social Media Monitoring
Typhoon Pablo/Bopha Philippines
Overview of Social Media Mapping Activation
Typhoon Pablo/Bopha December 4-6, 2012
February 2013

2. Pacific Endeavor Knowledge Management
August 15, 2012
Presented by Cat Graham
In 2011 volunteers contributed over 17,000 hours of service.
In 2012 they monitored over 300 events in 56 countries
participated in, helped develop or execute over a dozen exercises or
experiments that included social media and online crisis mapping.
“The volunteers of Humanity Road are doing a superb job of
providing useful and actionable advice to disaster affected
communities, both before and after disasters strike."–
Gisli Olafsson, ICE-SAR Team Leader (NetHope)
Global 501c3 NGO public charity
Digital Disaster Response
About Humanity Road
A few folks we have worked with and supported
Humanity Road in the News

3. On Wednesday, December 5th Humanity Road received a request to activate on
behalf of UNOCHA via the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN). Since our volunteer
network had been monitoring social media prior to activation, we had already
collected information in advance of activation. The DHN joint solution determined to
activate both Humanity Road and the Standby Taskforce. The focus for Humanity
Road volunteers was the collection and input of reports that were generated prior to
December 5th. In order to provide a joint response that is seamless, volunteers
submitted reports into a crisis map provided by Standby Volunteer Taskforce
volunteers. This streamlined workflow, the team further separated focus of resources
on particular dates for data mining to improve efficiency of joint resource. The
solution team was given 12 hours to produce a data set for UN OCHA Coordinated
Assessment Support Section (CASS) in Geneva.
The resulting output assisted UN OCHA CASS in creating a situational report and the
dataset was utilized by the Google Crisis team as an overlay into their Crisis Map. The
following outlines the timeline and outputs for this groundbreaking activation.
Typhoon Pablo/Bopha – Overview

4. About The Digital Humanitarian Network
“The purpose of the Digital
Humanitarian Network
(DHNetwork) is to leverage digital
networks in support of 21st century
humanitarian response. More
specifically, the aim of this
network-of-networks is to form a
consortium of Volunteer &
Technical Communities (V&TCs)
and to provide an interface
between formal, professional
humanitarian organizations and
informal yet skilled-and-agile
volunteer & technical networks.
http://digitalhumanitarians.com/ “
HR
SBTF
GW
OB
HOT
SWB
GISC
Corp
Map
A
TWB
DK
ESRI
UNV

5. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha - Activations
Wed Dec 3 - 4
Humanity Road monitoring event
Situation Report
Humanity Road Volunteers mobilized early on December 3, 2012 monitoring the
Typhoon for emerging impacts. Volunteers from Urgent Needs and Animals in
Disaster team deployed online to monitor and collect emerging impacts and support
urgent needs. The team was geospatially distributed from Vienna, Germany, USA, and New
Zealand. Our situation report was released early on December 4 and another one posted on
December 5 summarizing the destruction in Cateel.
Wed Dec 3 - 4
Hashtags identified included
#bopha, #pablo, #typhoon, #pa
bloPH, #bophaPH, #Philippines
, #Mindanao, #Visayas, #Hinatu
an, #CDO (Cagayan de Oro),
#walangpasok (school
cancellations), #reliefPH, rescu
ePH, #pablosafetytips

6. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha DHN Activation
Report
Map
Thu Dec 6
Wed Dec 5
Wed Dec 4
Humanity Road is monitoring event
UN OCHA activates DH Network,
DHN deploys Humanity Road
and Standby Task Force
Content was collected into
Ushahidi platform which
was pulled into several
output formats & Delivered
Thursday morning
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
activated the Digital Humanitarian Network (DHN) on December 5th at 3pm
Geneva time (9am New York). The deployment team was given 12 hours to
complete the project

7. Social
Media
Message
Volunteer
Crisis Team
Requesting
Official
Dateline Philippines
Cateel & Boston
hardest Hit areas
Social Media Crisis Map
Brought to you by
Typhoon Pablo/Bopha – Collection
The activation requested to collect all relevant tweets about
Typhoon Pablo posted on December 4th and 5th; identifying
pictures and videos of damage/flooding shared in those tweets;
geo-locate, time-stamp and categorize this content. Volunteer
network coordinated by DHN was supported by Humanity Road
and Stand-by Volunteer Task Force (SVTF). The team then
provided the database at 5am Geneva time the following day.
Information was categorised in sixteen categories. Over 20,000
feeds were scanned filtering 122 unique data items.
Wed Dec 5

8. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- Outputs
The DHN Team provided the database at 5am Geneva time the following day on
Dec 6. The UN OCHA Coordinated Assessment Support Section in Geneva
compiled Social Media Map and Report using the data. Subsequently the data
was imported into Google Crisis Response Map as a data layer and NetHope
utilized the situation report as well in their report issued December 6
Wed Dec 6

9. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha - NetHope Reports
NetHope utilized the information,
Pulling from the initial HR Situation report
For their NetHope Situation report #1
Issued Dec 6

10. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- Google Crisis Map Reports
The Google Crisis Organization exported the data from the crisismap as a layer.
The crisis map, available in Filipino, shows the typhoon track, landslide- and
flood-prone areas, areas under public storm warning signals, and other important
information about the disaster. (Source)

11. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- UN OCHA Report
Page 1
UN OCHA Coordinated Assessment Support Section in Geneva compiled
Social Media Report using the database provided to them.
Reports

12. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- UN OCHA Report
Page 2
Reports

13. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- UN OCHA Report
Page 3
Reports

14. Typhoon Pablo/Bopha- UN OCHA Report
Page 4
Reports

15. “… assessment results after a disaster determine the future and scope of the
relief efforts and directly impact the affected population. The results of this
exercise will also contribute to on-going work …. in the Philippines with
regards to Communication with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC). This
allows humanitarian actors to establish two way communication with
affected communities, increasing affected communities involvement in
decision making process”
On behalf of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs, I would like to take a moment to thank Humanity Road, Stand-by
Volunteer Task Force (SVTF), DHNetwork and ….UN OCHA ISS for job well
done”
December 9, 2012
From a letter of thanks addressed to the Digital Humanitarian Network, and
deployed team Humanity Road, Standby Volunteer Task Force

16. Brought to you by
www.humanityroad.org
Driven by Need, Led by Experience, Powered by Volunteers.