India is largely affected by natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, and drought of late. During and after the natural crisis, the disaster management team requires accurate details of the affected areas to help the people recover from the disaster. Normally the communication channels are quite distorted and it takes significant time for the rescue team to reach the affected areas on time.
Now Facebook has taken the initiative to help the disaster management team in reaching the affected areas with adequate resources like food, water, and medicine. There are several initiatives Facebook has introduced to improve the action of the response team to enhance their action of relief aids.
Facebook is facilitating the data of disaster maps to NDMA (National Disaster Management Authority) in India and SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society). Disaster maps were globally introduced in June and Facebook is providing multiple disaster response efforts by removing the critical information gap between organizations and disaster areas. Hence, people have chosen Facebook to aggregate location information. There are several aspects of this initiative:
- Location density maps: It shows the location of the inhabitants before, during and after any disaster. After comparing this information with the old records, the relief organizations understand the disaster-affected areas.
- Movement maps: The illustration of storm/ cyclone’s movement patterns between various cities in a certain period of time helps the organizations to do predictions about the required areas, gain insight, and continue the evacuation operations.
- Safety check maps: These are based on the location of the community who take the help of safe areas to put their friends and family members safely. This location data once aggregated help the serving organizations figure out the whereabouts of the affected people and offer help accordingly.
The officials of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) said that sending relief aids to the affected people are always their top priority. Thus, the resources they require are too crucial for the prompt action of the disaster management team. Facebook’s Disaster Maps plays a key role in helping them to get the right help to the right people at the right time.
