If you have interest in this topic, I encourage you to visit the CanVOST space within the Partnerships Toward Safer Communities - Online community (PTSC-Online) . If dealing with social media during an emergency is one of your responsibilities, I encourage you to not only take a look, but consider joining CanVOST where you can contribute to their development and learn as you help them. 

Here is what I observed during the exercise which was supported by International Safety Research Inc. with the social media aspects of the exercise conducted within their secure exercise portal.  Use of the secure exercise portal which contained blogs and their versions of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. enabled the exercise to take place without the public being able to see the posts and mistake them as a real emergency incident. 

The exercise simulated alerting the CanVOST volunteers who used a Google Hangout to recieve their initial briefing. Skype chat and group calls were used as needed to keep the team updated and informed during the exercise as they monitored social media activity within the exercise portal. A shared Google dcument was used by the volunteers to record and categorize relevant social media posts. Urgent 911 type information was relayed promptly to incident command and an analysis of the Google document was used to provide comand with an overview of what social media was saying about the incident to enable them to more effectively deal with the issues. 

I believe the exercise validated the CanVOST concept, but it also identified the need for training CanVOST volunteers and fine tuning the systems and procedures used for social media monitoring and tracking during the exercise, 

If you would like to learn more, please visit CanVOST.