From Disruption to Harmony: Harnessing Mobility to Orchestrate Effective Response

Mobility continues to be one of today’s dramatic trends, with media tablets and mobile-centric applications as the top two technology trends for 20121. Continuous sales growth of Windows Mobile, iOS, Android and Blackberry devices for both personal and enterprise accounts means that mobility is here to stay. For many individual and business users, PDAs and tablet devices have surpassed traditional laptop computers as their most-carried device. The explosion of social media and an ever-expanding application library have placed mobility at the center of the communication universe. As crisis response and business continuity professionals, we must better harness the “disruptiveness” and capabilities of mobility.

The Historical Perspective of Mobility in Crisis Planning and Communications

Prior to the widespread adoption of PDAs and high-speed cellular data networks, mobile devices were little more than another “alternate contact method” in our call trees or Emergency Notification System (ENS) software. They replaced text and numeric pagers as a way to make positive contact during times of disaster and, to a large extent, were not Internet accessible. To leverage this most fundamental feature of mobility, organizations produced scripted alerts and messages to pre-defined contact lists, ready at a moment’s notice. In time, organizations came to realize transition from voiceonly to data-integrated devices, which started to diminish the role of voiceonly communications and broadened to take advantage of multi-modal capabilities, such as SMS and e-mail. However, even in this transition period, the full potential for mobility was not readily understood so the mobile device/PDA was still little more than a replacement for the traditional mobile telephone… exclusively focused on dissemination of scripted communications.

What Changed, and How Are We Evolving?

The proliferation of social media, digital imagery, 24 x 7 x 365 news cycles, and hyper connectivity have all opened our eyes to the role that social media and mobility play in managing threats to our organization’s people, our presence/ brand and our operations. We have at our disposal handheld technology with high computational power, geo-location tracking, live video streaming, audio bridging, and rich application libraries.

Individuals no longer solely read the news. In many cases, they are reporting current events…as they happen, utilizing micro-blogs, crowd-sourcing sites, and social networking applications. At first, most organizations were highly wary of the phenomenon, preferring to isolate their organizations from the new risks and exposures. However, now many organizations are embracing mobility as a critical part of their business strategy. We, as crisis managers and business continuity professionals, must adapt to the changing role of mobility in our lives – or be left behind as a profession.

Considering Utopia…
What Can the Future of Mobility in Crisis Response Be?

The paradigm for response will be far different than the one we have lived in to date. Imagine a facility explosion or significant act of violence within a major metropolitan area. From a centralized emergency operations center, employees in the immediate disaster zone can not only be contacted, but their location and proximity to the incident zone can be determined. Those employees closest to the incident can take live photos and video of the situation and communicate in real time with the EOC, who can then transmit the situation analysis to emergency responders.

Additionally, those employees who have been evacuated out of harm’s way can access a set of tactical response procedures – from their phone or tablet, instructing them where to go for safety or alternate work sites. A number of recent global catastrophes have highlighted mobility technologies that have greatly aided in their response. According to research from the University of Manchester, “Smartphones could help save hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of a disaster or humanitarian crisis.”2

A Case in Reality –
The Crisis in Japan

During the 2011 catastrophe in Japan, Google created a mobile-accessible crisis response site.3 Leveraging a combination of proprietary and open applications, individuals and employees from many different organizations were able to retrieve up-to-the-minute news updates, search for missing people, and report on the status of people who may have been affected.

Also during the crisis in Japan, NHK, the Japanese government television broadcaster, was able to stream footage via correspondents and ordinary citizens via iPhone applications to viewers around the world.4 This connected millions of people, thousands of miles away, so they could understand the gravity of the situation and witness the situation as it unfolded. While not used specifically for crisis coordination and response in this instance, it is easy to understand how powerful this level of situational intelligence could be for response and recovery.

The Challenge to Realize –
Technical, Security and Privacy Considerations Need Apply

While we understand the potential gains to be made by moving toward a more robust future state, organizations need to be cognizant of the vulnerabilities and security exposures inherent in mobility. First and foremost, access to high-speed wireless and cellular (3G/4G) networks is a foundational requirement to any mobility strategy. While this infrastructure continues to expand within U.S. urban areas and across other major global cities (such as Tokyo), it should not be taken for granted in rural or suburban geographies.

To make the deepest impact, mobility needs to be part of the organization’s strategy technology roadmap, implemented broadly across the enterprise. Make sure appropriate security and data privacy measures are in place to limit the exposure of sensitive corporate data or unintentional release of private information. The trend of “Bring Your Own Device” has become more pervasive, where organizations allow employees to utilize their personal devices for business purposes. While this provides for better enterprise cost containment, it becomes even more critical to protect the organization from data leakage vulnerabilities inherent on devices not controlled or managed by enterprise security resources.

Geo-location tracking, while a critical technology during a crisis, may still be seen by many as a potential for invasion of personal privacy. A fine line must exist between when such tracking may or may not be enabled – there is not an easy answer to the privacy challenge.

The Human Factor

While adoption of mobility within our crisis response and coordination may be seen as fait accompli to some, organizations must be prepared to educate their workforces on why, when and how mobility tools should be used to aid in crisis response and recovery. Real-time images and video can be a boon in crisis situations, but not when there is information overload.

Additional coaching on appropriate and inappropriate usage of such technology must be clear, precise and well-governed. If defined, implemented and managed effectively, we have a powerful toolkit to protect our people, operations and brand.

1 Reference: Gartner, The Top 10 Technology Trends for 2012

2 Reference: ZD Net, “Google stands up Japan earthquake crisis response site” (www.zdnet.com/blog/google/google-standsup- japan-earthquake-crisis-response-site/2832)

3 Reference: Science Daily, “Smart Way of Saving Lives in Natural Disasters” (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2012/01/120104111910.htm)

4 Reference: The Telegraph, “Japan earthquake: how Twitter and Facebook helped” (www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/ twitter/8379101/Japan-earthquake-how-Twitter-and-Facebookhelped. html)