Australia Blog
News and notes from Google Down Under
When disaster strikes, let information slip through the net
Thursday, September 20, 2012
[This was originally published today in
The Sydney Morning Herald
]
When an earthquake shook country Victoria in late June, the first point of call for many Australians was online. "Earthquake" became the top trending term on Twitter within minutes and was the third fastest-rising search term in Australia for the month.
Google's search data show almost anywhere in the world, when a disaster strikes, people head online for information - warning alerts, recommended actions, evacuation routes, the state of essential utilities, social services, shelter and access to food. Tragically, this information isn't always there.
This can be for a variety of reasons: sometimes the information simply isn't online, or it is in a format that is hard to share on the internet or view on mobile. Official sources such as government websites can buckle under a surge in traffic, as happened to Geoscience Australia after the Victorian tremor.
A flood or an earthquake can also redraw our everyday landscape so that conventional maps don't work. For example, last year's Japanese tsunami flooded traffic arteries and many aid workers drove down a main road that had become a dead end, critically delaying services.
That's where the internet comes in. Having been part of the UN response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, I've experienced the challenges of gathering even the most basic information, such as who had access to which communities and where did people most need help? The astonishing rise of social media in Indonesia would bring a rush of answers today, as well as a few new challenges such as verification and information overload. But those challenges are far easier to tackle than the eerie silence that descended upon Aceh.
There's almost no justification for authorities withholding information. At a recent disaster-information conference in the Japanese city of Sendai, participants - from non government organisations to government agencies - unanimously agreed that limiting information does not help calm people. That consensus followed criticism of authorities for sitting on the release of nuclear contamination data for more than month because it was considered "not reliable enough" for the public, yet good enough to share with international agencies.
In an information vacuum, social media such as Twitter registers problems minutes after they occur; the information is soon in the hands of people who need help, as well as in the hands of people who want to help. Our rule of thumb is that the more information is shared, the better it gets. Limits on information cause anxiety.
As the bushfire season nears, the main lesson Australia can take from the Japan experience is to set up processes, collaborate and share data before a crisis. Since the 2009 Victorian bushfires, a lot of Australian agencies have those processes in place, but more often than not they've reached this conclusion the hardest possible way: through crises.
Assuming nearly all information the government has can be useful in a crisis, whether it's something obvious like community-bushfire evacuation routes or mundane details such as the location of portable toilets (an important issue during last year's Christchurch earthquake). Companies, too, can play a role and think about what useful information they can provide in a crisis: banks can let people know where ATMs are working, utilities can provide details on where power and water is available.
Secondly, let's provide that data in open and interoperable formats so it can be used and shared by anyone on the web, not locked in PDFs or JPG images as some evacuation routes and other critical data have been.
Thirdly, let's make data available under open licensing or permissions so that Google and others can legally republish it. At the peak of the 2009 bushfires in Victoria, a rush of traffic made the state's Department of Sustainability and Environment and Country Fire Authority websites hard to access. Google's crisis-response team used government information to launch a map of fire locations, updated in real time, which received more than 1 million page views. It doesn't matter who's hosting it, what counts most is that the information itself is resilient. So it makes sense to have many websites host it and take on the burden together.
It's cliche to say collaboration helps us survive a crisis. What that means today is that information isn't worth anything unless people are taking that information, adapting it, consulting it and getting it to the people who need it.
Posted by Nigel Snoad,
product manager for Google.Org's Crisis Response team.
Labels
20%
3D
AdSense
AdWords
AdWords Express
Agencies
agencies adwords TV
Analytics
android
announcements
antarctica
App Marketplace
apps
art
Australia
Australian IT
big data
Big Query
blogging
blogs
books
broadband
business
calendar
campaign management
careers
CeBIT
chrome
Chromebox
cloud computing
competition
computer science
conversion tracking
creativity
currents
cyber safety
cycling
dashboard
Developer Day
developers
digital advertising
digital economy
Display
display ads
Doodles
drive
ebooks
education
Election
energy
enhanced campaigns
Enterprise
entrepreneurship
environment
Equatorgate
Fairfax
film
filtering
G'day Google
Getting Aussie Business Online
Gmail
gone google
gonegoogle
google
Google App Engine
Google Apps
Google Apps for Business
Google Apps for Education
Google Art Project
Google Australia
Google Chrome
Google Code
Google docs
Google Drive
Google Earth
google maps
Google Places
google play
Google Search
Google Serve
Google Sites
Google Talk
Google Trends
Google+
Googlers and culture
government
green
Guest blogger
guest speakers
Hangouts
HR
iGoogle
information
innovation
internet
internet industry
IT
Julia Gillard
language
life
local
maps
measurement
media industry
mobile
Moderator
movies
music
navigation
NBN
netball
new features
news
NGEN
non-profit
online advertising
online safety
open government
open source
Partnerships
picasa
play
Policy
politics
prime minister
privacy
prizes
PSI
publishers
puppies
real estate
Reception
recruitment
removals
rentals
reporting
research
Running
scholarships
schools
science
search
search ads
Security
shopping
sitelinks
sketchup
small business
smartphones
SMB
street view
student programs
students
Stupid Google employee tricks
Summer of Code
Support
survey
sydney
symphony
tablet
technology
Themes
tips
training
transit
translate
transparency
transport
Universities
vault
voicesearch
Wave
women
workplace culture
YouTube
YouTube Live
zeitgeiest
Archive
2019
Feb
Jan
2018
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2017
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2016
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Feed
Google
on
Follow @googledownunder
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
