Saturday, the 25th of April, was just another weekend until the hands of the clock struck 11:40:01. An earthquake of magnitude 7.8 struck about 34km away from Lamjung district of Nepal and shook the earth, literally. The tremors of this quake affected many states of India as well and were felt as far as Delhi-NCR. Here are a few examples of how tech companies are doing their bit to provide relief to those affected by the quake:
1. Google’s Person Finder Tool
An open source web application, this service is fairly old but has caught the eye of South Asians after the recent disaster. This quake has affected Google on a very personal level as they lost one of their executives on Mt. Everest. The first deployment of this service took place after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. It took the team about 72 hours to complete and launch the service. In subsequent disasters faced by the world, the service was live within a day and in many cases, within an hour after the calamity occurred. The service is based on 2011 September attacks survival registry and PPIF (People finder interchange format) data standards.
2. Safety Check feature from Facebook
Facebook launched a very simple Safety Check service in which a notification was sent to the people living in the areas affected by earthquake.
Clicking on the notification directs you to a page where you can click on “mark safe” button in front of your friend’s and family’s name. This sends out the notification to that person and their friends that they are safe.
There is an option which lets you tell your friends that you’re in the affected are clicking on it leads to you to page where you can mark yourself safe.
3. The Humanitarian OpenStreet Team (HOT) was activated by OpenStreetMap
Kavach Chandra
kavachc@dubeat.com
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