Social media has become an integrated part of human communication, both as a means to establish and maintain social relationships, and as a means of sharing and co-creating information. Social media comes with an array of possibilities for individuals as well as organizations, corporations, and authorities. Within the field of crisis communication, social media possibilities such as online sharing and social networking have had an impact on the way crisis information is disseminated and updated. This paper addresses the issues related to using social media for communicating crisis information and broadcasting alert messages to the general population, discusses the role of social media in future pan-European crisis alerting, and presents a prototype system demonstrating the possibilities. An extensive systematic literature review was carried out to identify factors that affect the use of social media for alerting and warning. These factors were mirrored in experiences, collected through interviews, obtained by emergency management organizations in three European countries (Sweden, Czech Republic, and Spain). The factors finally form the basis for suggestions and recommendations regarding the design of technological tools for both communication and information collection to serve as an integral part of a future pan-European crisis alerting system.

In 2010, IT-security experts from northern European governments and organizations gathered to conduct the first of a series of NATO-led cyber-defense exercises in a pilot attempt of training cyber defense. To gain knowledge on how to assess team effectiveness in cyber-defense exercises, this case study investigates the role of behavioral assessment techniques as a complement to task-based performance measurement. The collected data resulted in a massive data set including system logs, observer reports, and surveys. Six different methods were compared for feasibility in assessing the teams' performance, including automated availability check, exploratory sequential data analysis, and network intrusion detection system attack analysis. In addition, observer reports and surveys were used to collect aspects relating to team structures and processes, aiming to discover whether these aspects can explain differences in effectiveness. The cross-disciplinary approach and multiple metrics create possibilities to study not only the performance-related outcome of the exercise, but also why this result is obtained. The main conclusions found are (1) a combination of technical performance measurements and behavioral assessment techniques are needed to assess team effectiveness, and (2) cyber situation awareness is required not only for the defending teams, but also for the observers and the game control.

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To strengthen the capability of societies to manage severe events, it is vital to understand what constitutes crisis management capability and how this can be assessed. The objective of this article is to explore how interorganizational crisis management capability has been assessed in the scientific literature. A systematic literature review was performed, resulting in a dataset of 83 publications. A thematic analysis resulted in nine themes of crisis management capability being identified, where interaction was the largest one. Analyses resulted in a comprehensive overview of assessment methods within the themes. The evaluation methods were mainly applied on real cases rather than exercises. The present article contributes with an increased understanding of how crisis management capability is evaluated, as well as applicability and limitations of different methodological approaches. This insight is essential in order to conduct a valid assessment of crisis management capability and design exercises that increase this capability.

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