By now you’ve probably heard about CrisisWire, the pet project of Nate Ritter and members of the San Diego Refresh team, designed to aggregate various types and formats of crisis related information all in one place. You may have even turned to CrisisWire for real-time information on the Santa Barbara fires and the more recent Mumbai catastrophe. Like so many others, I was immediately struck by the necessity of the site, and pretty impressed with the quick implementation and the relevance of content. I really wanted to delve deeper, so Nate and I sat down to discuss a myriad of topics including future plans for the site, and the challenges of real-time crisis information aggregation stymieing the adoption by traditional media types.

A Desperate Need for Information

Not to long ago, Om Malik wrote a timely piece on . He posits that “,” while faster than traditional media sources, is a blessing and a curse due to the propensity for inaccurate, and context-less information, especially in relation to disasters like the Mumbai attacks. I asked Ritter about his thoughts on the broader subject matter, since CrisisWire aggregates both new and traditional media sources side by side, and he believes that pulling all this information together and putting it into hands of the people is crucial. His motivation for building the site was simply because the need was there and no one was doing anything about it. He also had this to say:

Just because the information (from sites like Twitter) is fast, that doesn’t make it inaccurate. During the 2007 fires, 25% of the information I was publishing was pure citizen journalism, and only 2 out of 500 posts were inaccurate. I’ve found the inaccuracy claims not to be on the mark, although I definitely see a need for filtering.

The First Iteration

crisiswire aftershock

Clearly there is a need for information. Ritter launched the first iteration of the site to coincide with the simulated earthquake scheduled to occur in mid-November, the idea being that the simulated crisis would serve as a test bed and opportunity to make improvements. Ironically, the same day the Santa Barbara fires started and CrisisWire was really put to the test; the first two days after launch the site received about 500,000 page views.

How it Works

There’s currently no magic formula for constituting what a crisis actually is, but once a notable event occurs an administrative user (currently limited to the CrisisWire team, but expanding to include approved mainstream media types) accesses the back-end, customizes the appropriate fields, adds crisis-specific keywords, and a few minutes later the crisis page is published and publically accessible.

The core structure of the site is designed to pull in default feeds (based on keywords) from Flickr, Twitter, Google News, and Google Blog Search. Additional iterations will include feeds from YouTube, Qik, and additional sites that support citizen journalism. Feeds are either categorized as mainstream news, micro-publishing, or governmental agencies.

In the future, CrisisWire will support crowd-sourcing of site information, the ability for users to post information directly to the site, and the most relevant/important content will eventually float to the top. The first iteration was released so quickly that the CrisisWire team opted to just grab information (as opposed to dissecting it, and saving it in a database), which is why you currently can’t access previously created crisis pages. The next revision, however, will allow for the information to be saved and accessed after each crisis is over.

The Politics of Reporting Crisis Information

When it comes to a crisis, aggregating content in real-time is incredibly powerful and essential for harnessing all the information available and making it accessible to everyone. Unfortunately, CrisisWire threatens to attract attention away from major networks and local broadcasters, making it difficult for mainstream media types to embrace the site.

The media wants to be your source for crisis information, but they’re business model is problematic for the best interest of the public. Perhaps that’s why some of the bigger networks, who are certainly aware of CrisisWire, have yet to cover the site’s existence or inform the public that this information is available. Ritter hopes, however, that he can reach out to the mainstream press and encourage them to participate. His priority is to get the information into the hands of the people, journalists, and response teams who can use it. He’s open to custom development, and desires to create relationships that enable mainstream media to take credit for news submitted.

If you think you can help, please email Nate Ritter at nate[at]perfectspace[dot]com.