Webinar: Innovative Models and Tools

Join the Strategic Foresight Initiative (SFI) team for a Webinar/Conference Call

 Together, we will discuss and explore strategic needs classified as “Innovative Models and Tools” including: 

• Adopt new risk management tools and processes in order to manage cascading consequences of interactions among infrastructure and all hazards
• Employ alternative surge models to meet the challenging confluences of social, technological environmental, economic, and political factors and conditions
• Establish flexible frameworks that optimize emergency management inter-operability across all boundaries, because of increasing jurisdictional and technological complexities
• Remediate hidden vulnerabilities in critical supplies – from water to energy to medical products – to offset threats to the full scope of emergency management activities
• Influence the development of emerging technologies that advance emergency management capabilities  

Overview 

Dr. Sophia Liu, Mendenhall Postdoctoral research fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), will discuss the opportunities and challenges with integrating official and crowdsourced crisis information based on the evolutionary developments in the field of crisis mapping. She will explain some of the social, technological, organizational, and political interface challenges that have emerged from social media use in the crisis domain. Additionally, the FEMA External Affairs Digital Communications team will present on FEMA’s perspective on the current and the future anticipated use of social media platforms for emergency and disaster communication tools and their linkage to meet future strategic needs.  

As part of the conference call, the SFI team will provide a brief overview of the above outlined strategic needs and invite participants to share anecdotal information about how their programs/initiatives are meeting these needs, as well as any challenges and solutions identified when implementing actions to meet the strategic needs.

To access the Webinar:

• To access the training, please go to: https://fema.connectsolutions.com/innovative-models-tools/. 
• Please test the software on your computer before the training date at: https://demo.connectsolutions.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm . You do not need any special adobe connect software, but you will need to make sure you have flash and ActiveX installed on your computer. You should be prompted to install ActiveX as soon as you pull up the adobe connect site. The installation process should only take a few minutes.
• When you are on the Adobe Connect homepage, please select "Sign in as Guest" and enter your first and last name. 
• We will be using a conference call to communicate with participants during the webinar.  Please call: 1-800-320-4330 and enter PIN 000185.  Please note that due to the number of participants we will ask that you please mute your phone during the webinar.
• You can post questions to the presenters using the chat functionality of Adobe Connect. We will moderate the Q&A portion of the webinar by calling on particular participants to elaborate on their questions/ideas posted under the chat window.  

For more information on the SFI, you can contact the SFI Project Team via email at FEMA-OPPA-SFI  and you can visit the SFI web page to read the relevant research papers.