Social Media To The Rescue!

In crisis and disaster situations throughout the globe, social media has emerged as the ‘power of many’ to help prepare and mitigate the after-effects. Preparedness has been always been better than response in such situations.  Had it been a giant cyclone, a flood or even a building collapse, it is really exciting to see how technology and social media are used to improve the reach of information and manage disasters effectively in today’s global scenario. 

Social media had been projected as a major lifesaver during many disasters with a noted few being cyclone ‘Katrina’ , the Uttarakhand floods and the recent ‘Phailin’ storm in the Indian subcontinent. Access to information has become as important as access to food and shelter. It has also become perishable, making accurate and real-time information on demand. 

How social media can help? 

People use social media to communicate during crisis. During such instances, the number of tweets and facebook posts surge as well.  Mining data from social media is a great way to get a sense and map social media data about crisis areas and make use of it for planning and disaster recovery measures.

Google Crisis management is a public interest initiative to help find missing people during a disaster. It combines the power of contributors as well as the people looking out for information to generate a media for communicating in times of distress.