The emergency management community has a subject area for “Social Media in Emergency Management” or #SMEM.

My experiences with Social Media have lead me to the conclusion that although SAR and SAR managers have much to learn from the SMEM community, the discipline of Search and Rescue has enough differences in techniques and goals for the use of Social Media that we need to have our own subject area (or hashtag).

I’ve been writing about Social Media and it’s applications for SAR for a while now, and was invited to present at SARScene 2013 this year. At the conference I’m going to talk on a panel with other subject matter experts about how Social Media can be used by SAR groups to further their goals; assist them in finding lost or missing people, promote public safety, and to increase awareness in the community in the role of SAR in society.

I’ll be tweeting information about the use of Social Media in SAR under the new hashtag #SMSAR.

I encourage practitioners of Search and Rescue to join in the conversation by using this hashtag. Hopefully we can engage the community, and work together to find new ideas and best practises on how to use Social Media in SAR.

#SMSAR