Shahabuddin Amerudin @ UTM

Software companies are integrating geographic information systems (GIS) technology and social media to map people’s tweets and other social media platforms with geospatial data. This pairing has been helpful in disaster response and crisis management. In the wake of the January 12th, 2010 earthquake in Haiti, a free phone number was established to allow people to text their requests for medical care, food, water, security, and shelter. According to the Mission 4636 report, “Tireless workers and volunteers translated, geolocated and categorized the messages via online crowdsourcing platforms which sorted the information by need and priority, and distributed it to various emergency responders and aid organizations. Initially, the focus was on search and rescue, but the service scaled up about one week after the earthquake to include a wide range of responses, including serious injuries, requests for fresh drinking water, security, unaccompanied children and clusters of requests for food, and even childbirths”. In May 2012, researcher Laura Morris wrote in Haiti Wired Blog, “ Not only is the ubiquity of mobile telephony globally coupled with the Internet and GIS enabling the victims of crisis to become more active in their own recovery, making the delivery of aid a truly participatory process, semantic web tools such as Ushahidi are empowering the globally connected ‘crowd’ to engage in crisis response and support. Everywhere technology is being used in many different ways to help with disaster & confl ict early-warning, management & resolution and for peacebuilding in the aftermath of crisis”.

Source: Newton Lee (ed), (2014). Facebook Nation Total Information Awareness, 2nd Ed, Springer.