We put social media into New York State’s emergency drill at Grand Central

We work with New York State to help them add a dynamic social media component to their full-scale exercises. Most recently we supported with the delivery of a full-scale exercise at the recently-opened Grand Central Madison Terminal.

The session was delivered overnight and tested the emergency response processes of multiple stakeholders to a high-impact incident impacting the terminal.

We used our Social Simulator platform to recreate the traditional and social media reaction to the incident to add realism, impact and complexity to the exercise, with a focus on:

• Initial witness reporting to test how responders established situational awareness of the incident
• Speculation and misinformation to test how EOC responders and PIOs managed this to share accurate guidance and information with members of the public
• Live media reporting from the scene to test how PIOs managed interactions with members of the media to ensure consistency of messaging.