As we have covered previously, social media has begun to play a major role in disaster preparedness and response in recent years. But some have taken the idea of digital warnings to a new level, ones that if you happen to be driving down certain highways in this country are nearly impossible to miss.

Emergency Management is reporting that FEMA has taken to utilizing electronic billboards in an effort to get the word out about impending catastrophes. On April 29^th after a series of tornadoes had savaged Missouri and Alabama FEMA sent the word out to the outdoor advertising trade association that using digital billboards as a means to get important response information to citizens. Soon after more than 155 billboards spread across six states began displaying FEMA's toll free helpline.

"We have received very positive feedback from the states involved," Jeanie Moore, senior adviser in FEMA's Private Sector Division in Washington, D.C., told Emergency Management.

Governments, at any level, using outdoor advertising space to get information out about developing situations is nothing new. In the months following the 9/11 attacks the newly minted Department of Homeland Security used donated billboard space to get their message out to shaken citizens. Digital billboards were used to relay important messages following the 2007 Minneapolis bridge collapse and this March's Japanese tsunami which was seen at the time as a threat to the California coastline.

FEMA has conducted a case study which is available on their official website detailing the usefulness of digital advertising space in such situations. As the study correctly points out, this technology allows for the quick transmission of time sensitive bulletins. The importance of this can never be underestimated, as those in Joplin or Tuscaloosa can attest to.