Government and Industry Using Fake Social Media to Train for Crisis

Crisis events in the modern century are no longer delivered with the morning coffee, but rather digitally through a 24/7 barrage of Tweets, Facebook posts, media stories, unexpected announcements from partner agencies, and unpredictable public response.

The instantaneous nature of our digital age has added a new set of challenges for crisis managers. As a result, government agencies, Fortune 500s and NGOs are now training on private social media platforms that work like their real-world counterparts.

“In the nuclear industry we take public safety very seriously, so risk communications is hugely important,” noted Eric McErlain with the Nuclear Energy Institute. “The emergence of the new media forced the industry to relook at our approach, and try to figure out how to integrate social media in the emergency operations center, and how our crisis communications teams engage with the public.”

SimulationDeck is a tool created by a team of former FEMA employees who are now emergency management consultants. The private, cloud-based application includes mock media news channels, social media platforms, agency websites, and controller tools for emergency managers wanting to simulate natural disasters, technological attacks, or human-caused emergencies. The tool is used by airlines, cruise lines, airports, ports, power producers, oil and gas companies, universities, cities, counties, states, FEMA and DoD.