On the evacuation of Old Trafford Stadium after a suspicious package caused the cancellation of a Manchester United soccer match this past Sunday:
"The Manchester United event last Sunday is an indication of how suddenly information about a crisis can be extremely important. A full football stadium with 70.000 people needs to be informed and some specific action needs to be taken within minutes. Fortunately for that event the Stadium environment is used to dealing with that amount of people, has the necessary equipment to communicate with the public and these stadiums are designed to allow for a relatively quick exit if thousands of people. So the circumstances were perhaps not really a crisis. Fortunately Old Trafford was a kind of a nightmare, but for a different reason and to different people."
On the wildfires affecting areas of Alberta, Canada:
"A couple of days ago, the massive wild fires in Canada were a huge crisis though, and other recent natural emergencies have also proven that informing the public in time, and being prepared as authorities for information seeking behavior of those involved, are essential in dealing with these situations. Social media with their 24/7 presence play a major in that too, also in the way social media users might respond to emergency information (we did a study on that which was published in Risk Analysis in 2012: Verroen et al)."
More information about Dr. Gutteling's research can be found here
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