Many municipalities are deciding how to engage their citizens through social media while, at the same time, the universe of social media applications continues to grow and evolve. As of May 2011, the government of the City of New Braunfels, Texas, is not using centralized social media to interact with its constituents. This report considers whether or not social media tools are appropriate to help the city reach three identified service goals: 1) strengthening emergency management and communications services; 2) providing the capability to serve as a direct-to-citizen news entity instead of relying on traditional media for messaging; and 3) increasing public participation and engagement. Possible options and unresolved issues associated with each goal are presented. The community demographic profile of New Braunfels, the city’s status as a small urban community, and citizen access to high-speed Internet service increases the likelihood that residents will be online and engaged with social media on a regular basis. Data regarding the ownership of mobile phones and the use of these devices to connect to the Internet, combined with growing interest in social media, supports the exploration of social media for crisis communications. Three types of social media applications (microblogs/status-sharing applications, public alert applications, and blogs) present possible options for the use of social media to support emergency communications. Existing patterns of local press coverage provide the city with the possible motivation to innovate its message delivery. Possible options that could facilitate the city’s engagement of social media for messaging include hiring a public information officer, conducting an audit of the city’s brand identity online, and examining social media applications used by the city’s market comparators, including micromedia, photo and video sharing, and blogs. While data is limited with respect to existing levels of civic engagement, establishing social media policies and metrics capable of adapting to changing technologies could provide city administrators with a reasonable perspective on the value of social media for improving public engagement and participation. / text

An increasing number of older adults must continue working, which requires that they maintain their competencies and work skills, including use of mobile technology (MT). However, little is known about older adult adoption of MT in relation to work. This study used Rogers's diffusion of innovation theory and Davis's technology acceptance model as a framework. The purpose of this exploratory sequential mixed methods study was to examine the experiences of older adults' who adopted MT in the emergency communications (EC) field. Participants came from an emergency services LinkedIn group. Data sources included surveys completed by 85 respondents and interviews of a subset of 10 of the respondents. Phase 1 included survey analysis to develop descriptive statistics on the participants' placement in Rogers's stages of adoption, their perceptions of the usefulness, and the ease of use. Phase 2 included analysis of in-depth interviews, coding for themes and patterns. Survey results indicated that both perceived usefulness and ease of use affect the adoption of MT by older adult users in the EC field. The results of the interviews identified the usefulness and ease of use as factors for the participants. The social implications for employers include a deeper understanding of the specific factors that impact the adoption of MT by older adults. This study provides employers with a deeper understanding of the adoption of MT by older adults so they can develop stronger plans to help their older adults adopt mobile technology.

Adopted in 2003, the National Incident Management System is the nation’s first standardized management system unifying the actions of all levels of governments during a large-scale emergency response. It sets the standard for interagency coordination and communication in the event of an emergency. This professional report seeks to produce a working, NIMS-compliant emergency communication plan for the City of Austin, Texas. The report begins with an explanation of NIMS, focusing on the national protocols for interagency communication and public information. It then presents a case study of emergency communications in practice, examining two firestorms in San Diego County, California that occurred four years apart – prior to and after the County’s implementation of NIMS communications protocols. The report synthesizes best practices in emergency communications – from both NIMS research and the San Diego case study – to create the City of Austin Public Information and Emergency Communication Plan, an operational guide that fully utilizes the tools and organizational structure of all City departments, including the City’s Communications and Public Information Office. / text

Emergency response is highly time-critical and information dependent: every moment counts and organizations need to access various information that supports their decision making and informs them about the scale and location of the emergency, the damages, and the availability of human and physical resources. This kind information can originate from many different places and the situation can be stressful as there is a need to communicate quickly, reliably and accurately within their own organization, but also inter-organizationally. ICTs make it possible to access and spread information with speed and efficiency, but other factors, such as different professional cultures, can still hinder information sharing. There is a growing need in emergency organizations to develop understanding for how communications between emergency responders can be secured. It seems important to consider how emergency responders respond to security objectives, since the assumptions for secure communications may not only be developed on the premise of ICT, but also how the emergency actors appreciate the emergency environments in terms of secure communications.The aim of this research is to develop understanding of information security and secure communications in a context where it has not been well researched. The research looks at secure emergency communications from a socio-technical viewpoint and concentrates on the communication inside and between the emergency organizations of police, the paramedics, and the rescue department in the municipality of Kemi, and more specifically on the communications of operative emergency actors while they are working in the preparedness and response phases of emergency management. Two persons from each organization were interviewed using semi-structured interviews, and the empirical data was used for writing the appended papers that are the basis of this thesis work.The research started by doing an extensive literature review and analysis on the field of secure emergency communications. The results show that while technical developments on the field aim at effective and secure technologies, organizational aspects of emergency communications seem to involve not only emergency actors, but also how these actors more and more utilize information technology. The landscape for emergency management is becoming very diverse, which challenges the way that secure emergency communications can be understood. The developers of future emergency communications structures not only need to ensure the technical aspects of confidentiality, availability and integrity of information, but they also need to take into account the social rules, norms and structures that guide the emergency communication. Next, this research sought out to re-conceptualize the role of information security in emergency response. A conceptual basis encompassing technical, cognitive and organizational information security layers as a relationship between association and connectivity was developed by synthesizing Actor Network Theory and Theory of Organizational Routines. The approach of combining two theoretical accounts details the enactment of information security in emergency response so as to understand how cognition ties technical security features with organizational security issues. Without the cognitive layer, the technical and organizational aspects of information security remain static or disconnected to the actions performed during emergency response. Theoretically the approach contributes constructively to describe an alternative approach to information security research to address the gap between formal and informal criteria of information security.Lastly, the research sought out to explore the current situation of the case organizations in detail concerning their level of information security, communication challenges faced, and training offered. It was learned that different aspects of information security are valued depending on whether emergency responders work in preparation periods or if they are responding to an emergency: 1) When working in their own respective organizations the most important aspect was information confidentiality 2) When responding to emergency the most important aspects were information availability and integrity. Most communication challenges present in emergency communications can be seen to arise when responding to emergencies. This is not something currently being taken into account in the case organizations. The basic training of emergency actors and the training and guidelines of each organization largely concentrate on confidentiality issues, and tools and communications training that would be needed to ensure information availability and integrity when responding to an emergency is not prioritized. To overcome the communication challenges present in emergency communications and to ensure confidentiality, availability and integrity of emergency information, those responsible for information security in emergency organizations must therefore provide up to date information security training and awareness building, but also tools and communications training that supports inter-organizational communication.

<p dir="ltr"><a href="" target="_blank">ABSTRACT</a></p><p dir="ltr">A literature review was conducted, to determine and gain a better understanding of the environmental, technological, physiological, and psychological issues that lone agricultural workers potentially face in the event they are involved in an emergency. An investigation was conducted of communication devices used in other industries where working alone was common, to monitor for and detect incident occurrences. An assessment of currently available emergency alert software and sensing technology for <a href="" target="_blank">communication </a><a href="#_msocom_1" target="_blank">[AE1]</a> devices was also undertaken in this review.</p><p dir="ltr">Three hundred and sixty-eight U.S. cases of fatalities or injuries were analyzed in which working alone was identified as a contributing factor. Cases included lone agricultural workers, between the ages 15-64, who were identified from a convenient sample of incident reports from <a href="" target="_blank">2016-2021</a><a href="#_msocom_2" target="_blank">[AE2]</a> . Of the 368 lone agricultural worker incidents analyzed, 38% (140) were caused by tractor rollover or tractor runover, and ATV/ UTV rollovers. Grain bin entrapments accounted for 13% (48) of all identified cases, of which 86% (42) were fatal. Thirty-three percent (121) of the identified incidents involved equipment roll over (not including runovers), and 50% of identified victims, when age was known, were 57 years of age or older. In 11 cases (3%), the victim was under 15 years old and active in agricultural-related tasks at the time of incident occurrence.</p><p dir="ltr">Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) tools were used to identify the proximity of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) facilities and cellular towers from a convenient sample of 29 fatal and serious agricultural related injuries from 2016-2021, occurring in the state of Indiana. This analysis found that there were substantially fewer EMS facilities within close proximity to documented rural incident locations compared to injuries or fatalities occurring closer to a populated area. There were also fewer cellular towers within close proximity of incidents located primarily on or near rural agricultural land. More densely populated areas tended to have a greater density of EMS and cellular tower locations, with, most likely, more favorable outcomes from injuries due to shorter <a href="" target="_blank">response times.</a><a href="#_msocom_3" target="_blank">[AE3]</a></p><p dir="ltr">An investigation of the physical and operational impact that agricultural equipment would have on the efficacy of commercially available wearable technologies was undertaken, to detect the potential injury-causing agricultural incident. Five experiments were conducted to test the feasibility of these selected wearable devices in detecting agricultural-related incidents with the potential of causing serious injuries. Only one <a href="" target="_blank">simulated agricultural incident</a> <a href="#_msocom_4" target="_blank">[AE4]</a> successfully triggered incident detection. <a href="" target="_blank">Incidents successfully triggered incident detection on one wearable device, the Garmin Vivoactive 4 smartwatch. </a><a href="#_msocom_5" target="_blank">[AE5]</a></p><p dir="ltr">Recommendations included greater emphasis on the hazards associated with lone workers assigned agricultural workplaces, development of new, evidence-based educational resources to incorporate in current prevention strategies directed at farmers, ranchers, and agricultural workers, enhanced supervision of young agricultural workers and compliance with existing child labor regulations, equipping lone workers with appropriate cellphones and/ or wearable technologies to be carried in their vehicles, agricultural equipment, or on their person, use of electronic surveillance or monitoring equipment, written policies and procedures that enhance awareness of worker locations and conditions on a regular basis, and adherence to existing federal and state workplace safety and health regulations related to lone workers.</p><p><br></p><p dir="ltr"><a href="#_msoanchor_1" target="_blank">[AE1]</a>Changed</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="#_msoanchor_2" target="_blank">[AE2]</a>Fixed</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="#_msoanchor_3" target="_blank">[AE3]</a>I’m not sure how to address that more rural people are dying, given the limited scope and criteria for selection of the incidents selected in this study.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="#_msoanchor_4" target="_blank">[AE4]</a>Not sure if this Is the best way to say it. I may end up cutting this part. I’ll pair the abstract down to ~250 words. For whatever reason, I thought the intro chapter abstract needed to be longer for a dissertation.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="#_msoanchor_5" target="_blank">[AE5]</a>Shortened this paragraph and removed unnecessary detail, for clarity.</p>