Emergency Communication: what PSAPs must do to make the most of Social Media

Using social media for emergency communication has been studied for years. EENA – the European Emergency Number Association – has long supported initiatives to implement social media in various public safety contexts. Social media interaction is inherently bidirectional, and 112 PSAPs can use these platforms both to provide information to the public and to collect data from verified sources.
The rules for emergency communication, as defined by ISO 22329 “Guidelines for the use of social media in emergencies,” cover both directions: on one hand, to enhance public communication in terms of timeliness, transparency, fighting misinformation, and inter-agency coordination; on the other, to gather data from institutional or verified accounts for a better understanding of ongoing events.

Emergency Communication: the situation in Europe and Italy

Launched by the EU in 2018 in response to terrorist attacks in France, the Reverse 112 project aimed to build effective citizen alert systems. In Italy, the law does not authorize 112 to broadcast emergency updates; that responsibility lies with Civil Protection. However, social media can be strategically useful in the opposite direction: through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or X (formerly Twitter), 112 PSAPs receive real-time information about incidents in specific areas and can optimize coordination with secondary PSAPs (PSAP2).

Early Warning: why it’s strategic

The 2024 flood in Tuscany showed how critical social media can be for PSAPs. Events with cascading effects — such as hydrological (floods, tsunamis), geological (avalanches, landslides), or atmospheric (heatwaves, storms) phenomena — can be mitigated if detected in time. Early Warning aims to deliver situational awareness about emerging threats. The window between upstream detection and downstream consequences is narrow; actions must be precise and follow strict protocols. Quickly alerting the secondary PSAP becomes key to effective response, and social media data collection plays an essential role.

Using Social Media data in 112 PSAPs: a 4-step process

Inside a 112 PSAP, collecting and using social media data for Early Warning follows a structured 4-step process:

1. Designating dedicated personnel. Social media monitoring must occur alongside normal operations, which continue independently. Call handling and social data analysis require different skill sets and cannot be performed by the same operators. Specific roles must be assigned to social monitoring.
2. Identifying listening channels. Emergency-related updates are primarily shared on platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok.
3. Data collection and analysis. Social listening is performed using relevant hashtags, which change based on the type of event and geographic location. Hashtags provide an aggregated view of the phenomenon, facilitating faster decision-making.
4. Eliminating fake news. Misinformation is identified through cross-checks. Fake news typically comes from unreliable sources, lacks confirmation or follow-up posts, and may feature outdated or unrelated images.

The trigger for social media analysis is often an unusual concentration of calls from the same area or related to the same event. Although CAD (Computer-Aided Dispatch) systems can detect suspicious call patterns, PSAPs should also adopt BI (Business Intelligence) tools. These provide real-time insights, with almost no latency, often before the event becomes visible. This anticipatory approach helps secondary PSAPs gain immediate situational awareness.
Studies show that social media use is central to achieving situational awareness — one of the primary goals of 112 — to ensure appropriate and timely emergency response. Citizens can make valuable contributions through information shared on social platforms. When combined with advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence, this wealth of data opens new opportunities to understand and respond to evolving crises.In conclusion, although the use of social media by 112 PSAPs in Italy is still in its early stages, it should be seen as a key objective in building increasingly efficient and effective emergency services.