BEMA International
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Local
website reviews
Review of emergency management
agency\offices within the U.S. at State, County, City, and township
levels. Review of notification &
communication plans, published plans, exercise schedules, and one of the MOST
IMPORTANT issues: community engagement of
‘whole community’ in awareness, education & training for all members of
the community. Transparency, employment
opportunities, community outreach,
grants (previous and currently received. A financial audit
trail will determine the
priorities of EM offices).
Many problems that communities
encounter: from San Francisco, Los
Angeles, to Boston, from Puerto Rico
to the U.S. Virgin Islands one
question to ask
1.
“Is or was the community activity
engaged in the emergency management program?”,
2.
“Who are their leaders in these
organizations, and do they actively reach out to the community?”.
These are just a few area of local
website and questions we ask during our review.
Membership
We continuously monitor and relay
messages within the BEMA International network of not only impending crisis
and disasters, but ongoing issues within our communities globally.
Ongoing issues of environmental
contamination in the U.S. (San Francisco 10-year toxic soil radioactive and
dust contamination, water security issues, etc.), global issues (water &
food security issues, recycling, health security, etc.)
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ReliefWeb
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How we inform on humanitarian crisis
24/7
By Véronique Durroux-Malpartida
© ReliefWeb
Because
humanitarian response isn’t only active from 9 to 5, neither is ReliefWeb. We actually monitor crisis
situations non-stop. In reply to the
question: “How do you make it work?”, here’s the answer to why and how we
transitioned to the 24/7 operating model to ensure the timely delivery of
crucial information.
Team
members strategically located
For
many years our editorial work was divvied up between three teams working from
UN headquarter locations. Time gaps existed here and there and weekends were
not fully covered, except during acute sudden-onset emergencies. A couple of
months after a devastating earthquake struck
Nepal in 2015, we extended our time coverage and moved on to a consistently
seamless workflow, implementing the 24/7 operation model.
Currently,
the editorial teams are run from three strategic places - Bangkok, Nairobi,
New York - and closely follow the activities of the humanitarian sector,
paying particular attention to the evolution of acute and emerging crises.
Our team members can handle ReliefWeb’s content around the clock because they
are based all over the globe. They are not only selected for their knowledge
and skills, but also for their capacity to work remotely.
Using
key tools for remote work
Over
the years, web-based tools have enabled us to rethink the way we monitor key
information and work as a virtual team. Services and applications such
as Inoreader and Desk now
support information monitoring and interactions with partners, while Trello and Flowdock provide cloud-based
collaboration tools for online discussions between team members, editorial
decision-making, and overall project management.
For
Melissa Elliott, a contractor based in Canada, "The key to being able to
feel confident in providing consistent coverage is having tools that help
filter the firehose of information found on hundreds of channels. Our
editorial team is constantly fine-tuning our filters to ensure we are
receiving relevant content immediately, allowing us to stay on top of daily
events in real-time."
Thanks
to this working model, ReliefWeb can filter thousands of content sources
throughout the day and provide crucial and reliable information around the
clock via the website and mobile apps,
and simultaneously power the content of sister platforms such as unocha.org and RedHum.
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In addition
to that, cultural heritage has been completely left out of consideration as 
