Facebook, NDMA introduce disaster maps in India

Social media firm Facebook has partnered with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and a non-profit body, SEEDS in India, to share critical data with them in wake of any natural disaster.

It will offer disaster maps data that illustrate aspects like people’s movement and concentration of Facebook users in the given area before and after a calamity.

The disaster maps were introduced globally in June and use aggregated location information that users have chosen to share with Facebook.

These tools have been deployed in Peru and the US.

The aggregated, de-identified Facebook data will be shared to help organisations address the critical gap in information they often face when responding to natural disasters.

Facebook is providing multiple types of maps during disaster response efforts, which will include aggregated location information people have chosen to share with Facebook, the company said in a statement.

This will help in improving response efforts to natural disasters in India. “During and after these crises, response organisations need accurate information to help communities response, recover and rebuild,” Facebook head of programmes (India, South and Central Asia) Ritesh Mehta said.

Traditional communication channels are often offline and it can take significant time and resources to understand where help is desperately needed, he said. If there is an area which has a high concentration of Facebook users that suddenly go offline, even that insight can be used to rush services to the area.

Chaya Nayak, public policy research manager at Facebook, said a lot of insights for developing the tools came from India. “We saw people using Facebook intensively during Chennai floods to connect and extend support to each other,” she added.

Facebook already has a safety check feature that allows users to notify their friends and family that they are safe.

Facebook is also holding its first annual Disaster Response Summit in India with NDMA, which will bring together many humanitarian organisations to help train and discuss how technology can be used to devise better responses to natural disasters and subsequent recovery.

It is also supporting the pilot of the ASK-DIV (Aapda Samachar Karyakarta-Disaster Information Volunteers) scheme where a network of trained volunteers provide supplementary information to inform government relief efforts through the Facebook Workplace platform.

This programme is being executed by SEEDS and will establish a network of volunteers to provide real-time, first-hand information on disasters in their local communities.

The programme will be piloted in two disaster-prone states - Assam and Uttarakhand.