The race to save lives: demonstrating the use of social media for search and rescue operations.

Importance: Utilizing social media in an emergency can enhance abilities to locate and evacuate casualties more rapidly and effectively, and can contribute towards saving lives following a disaster, through better coordination and collaboration between search and rescue teams.

Objective: An exercise was conducted in order to test a standard operating procedure (SOP) designed to leverage social media use in response to an earthquake, and study whether social media can improve joint Israeli-Jordanian search and rescue operations following a regional earthquake.

Design: First responders from both Jordan and Israel were divided into two mixed groups of eight people each, representing joint (Israeli-Jordanian) EMS teams.