The NCASD Lab is proud to announce the kick-off of Project HEROIC, a collaborative, NSF funded effort by the Lab in conjunction with researchers at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS). Through a combination of data collection and modeling of conversation dynamics, the project team aims to understand the relationship between hazard events, informal communication and emergency response. Project HEROIC’s initial phase seeks to understand the role and effectiveness of informal communications on popular microblogging sites, like Twitter, as information sources during disaster events of all types. Current research efforts are focused on rumoring during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. For more information on Project HEROIC, visit [HeroicProject.org]().