With the rapidly changing digital and social transformation in today’s society, part of sustaining your program for integrating social media and emergency management (SMEM) includes technology innovation. This section provides a few ideas to help you uncover areas of innovation.

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list; it will simply get you thinking creatively. Also, innovation may not be suitable or applicable for everyone. However, if you have the option of experimenting in a controlled environment or have a passion for innovation, innovation can be a great way to help sustain your program and keep it fresh.

Wayfinding as a Crisis Management and Prevention Strategy

Wayfinding simply means navigation and is generally applied to passengers within your facility. Using beacon (anonymous) technology as well as location-enabled devices, you can spot locations that are bottlenecked during an incident. During emergency evacuation, you can use this information to inform responders and direct passengers through tools such as airport web or mobile apps.

Development of Crowd-Sourced Crisis Management Tools

As the collection of anonymous crowd-sourced data becomes easier, you can increase your understanding of a crisis by gathering and combining information coming from those directly involved in the crisis. If you choose to explore this area, be sure to only collect and analyze anonymous data to respect the privacy of your airport users.