EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The present document is the final version of the deliverable “Report on the political, social and industrial opportunities arising from the use of emerging technologies” of the COSMIC Support Action. The purpose is to look into the political, social and industrial implications of the use of emerging technologies in crisis situations, in relation to existing policies and standards for the development and use of such technologies, as well as to highlight the opportunities which may arise for industrial stakeholders and the general public. We also address the inherent challenges and limitations posed by privacy and security issues, in the context of mass utilisation of emerging technologies and information gathering/sharing.
On the policy front, we present applicable measures and current EU legislation such as the Directive on data protection and the “Telecommunications Package”. Proposed reforms in existing legislation in areas such as data protection and the role of the Universal Provider in telecommunication services are presented from the point of view of their effects on crisisladen social networks services. In a similar fashion, we examine EU policy directions on emerging issues such as the openness of the Internet and the freedom of citizens to access and run applications and content.
With regard to standardisation we identify challenges such as the underlying telecommunications technologies, the presentation layer of social media, the data involved and the means of interacting with social media services. For the latter, we draw attention to the complex interplay between market leaders and their competitors and correspondingly between proprietary and open standards. We also present examples of the standardisation effort at two different international organisations, with differing missions. These are the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the World Wide Web Consortium, otherwise known as W3C. The former is a crisis response organisation, while the latter is a standardisation organisation organised as a community. Their common point, with regard to social networks is that they both, through the need to serve their purpose, recognise the necessity for standardisation in social media and work actively towards its achievement.
Moving on to the subject of privacy and security, we identify and discuss the various privacyrelated issues for stakeholders to consider, including t...