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Article:
Municipal Website Usage During the Great Blackout of 2003:
A Peek at How Municipal Websites Were Used During The Crisis
August, 2003 

Where were you when the lights went out around 4:00 p.m. on August 14th?  If you lived in Southeast Michigan, surfing the Internet was probably the last place you could be found.  In a matter of 15 minutes, power was cut to the entire region and all the way east to New York and north to Toronto, Canada and would remain out for 24-48 hours.  Most people's thoughts turned to water, ice, gasoline, propane and other essentials.  The lack of electricity made the telephone system, both cellular and land-based, the only means of communicating during the crisis. Unfortunately, the high demand swamped the cell towers and telephone switches around metro Detroit, making it impossible to get a connection for several hours. 

We found ourselves in a unique position at Municipal Web Services.  Fortunately, our servers are housed at a facility that is outside the footprint of the power outage.  Our clients' websites were available throughout the crisis.  In addition, we have home-based employees distributed around Michigan who were able to continue making updates to the websites from their home offices.  As a result, we were able to put emergency press releases onto our clients' websites throughout the power outage.  The question about a tree falling in the woods when nobody is around comes to mind, though.  Would it matter if emergency information were available if no residents could access it?

The answer is yes!  The availability of telephone lines and battery-operated laptop computers made access to the Internet possible.  Relatives of those in the affected areas were able to get information from the websites and relay it by phone.  When the power was eventually restored, all those affected in the municipality could check for important announcements, updates, advice, restrictions and other information.

We spent some time analyzing usage logs after the crisis had abated.  It revealed a lot about how the websites were used.  We limited our analysis to two cities whose websites get a significant amount of traffic and were updated with important information throughout the crisis.

Northville, Michigan
The City of Northville is a small community (population 6,500) with a downtown shopping district known for its retail, entertainment and dining destinations.  When the power went out, City Hall got back up and running quickly on generator power.  They immediately put out a press release announcing a water boil advisory and letting residents know that free water would be available at the local Rotary.  Municipal Web Services put the press release on the website around noon on Friday.  

Power was restored throughout the city at about 4:00 p.m. on Friday.  Nickie Bateson, the Assistant City Manager said "We made sure to communicate via the local press as well as through our website to ensure that we hit as broad an audience as possible.  Even though our residents couldn't access the website, we knew that relatives and friends in unaffected areas could consult the website on behalf of their friends and family who were both figuratively and literally in the dark."

Here's a look at the relevant website traffic numbers:

The City of Northville website is relatively new and traffic to the site is still building every month, so the daily total visits are typically higher than the average visits for a particular day of the week.  Right after the power went out, visits (per hour) to the site dropped to about half the usual traffic for about six hours.  The chart below also shows that traffic picked up again starting at 10:00 p.m.  Throughout the night, visits continued to exceed normal traffic levels by a large margin.  This high traffic level tapered off by 7:00 Friday morning.  Note that some of the early morning traffic was probably due to search engines catching up with spidering of the website.  

The press release announcing the water boil advisory was accessed 75 times during the 53 hours from noon on Friday, August 15th to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, August 17th.  A scrolling marquee of important news on the home page started off with a link to this press release leading to its high traffic count throughout the weekend.  "We carved out that area on our home page for important announcements and to draw attention to timely information.  The water distribution/ boil advisory press release was obviously the most important thing happening in the city so it was natural to lead off with a link to that page." said Ms. Bateson.

Novi, Michigan
The City of Novi is a fast growing community with a young and tech savvy population of 46,000.  The city has a broad range of both industrial and retail shopping districts in various pockets throughout the City and is situated near the intersection of two major southeastern Michigan freeways.  They lost power at approximately 4:15 p.m. on Thursday and it was restored between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Friday.

The City Administration responded quickly to the crisis by setting up a telephone hotline to make residents and businesses aware of comfort centers, boil advisories and regulations on reopening dining and entertainment establishments.  They asked Municipal Web Services to post the number prominently on  the home page of their website which draws about 45,000 unique visitors per month.

In all, the website had 3,835 visitors from Friday morning through Sunday.  During that time, the home page was accessed 671 times and were able to get the Power Outage Hotline phone number.  An impressive 137 people accessed the press releases page where more detailed information was provided.  Sheryl Walsh, Community Relations Manager for the City of Novi remarked "We viewed the Internet as another useful tool for communicating. We used grassroots efforts, cable the telephone and our website to get the word out.  With our phone system out initially, every person that checked the website was one less person frustrated by the inability to reach us by phone."

The charts below show how traffic dropped in the hours immediately following the blackout but rebounded later in the evening.

Two important conclusions can be drawn from this data.

• Users of municipal websites will access information in great numbers if the navigation is in place to get them there easily.  If maintained and updated properly, the website can be an important part of a disaster response and recovery effort.
• More than just local residents are using municipal websites.  Out-of-towners and other constituents from outside your locality use your website regularly.

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