As events continue to unfold in Japan, one software firm is making a material difference on the ground. Developed out of the political meltdown surrounding the astonishing tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, Google’s Person Finder tool is looking like it will become embedded in disaster relief processes worldwide. It’s a perfect example of how the digital industry can make a massive difference. Here’s why…
Natural disasters destroy the everyday structures we take for granted. Call centres don’t work when they are oversubscribed a hundred times, databases don’t work without power, processes that rely on people fail when the people can’t turn up for work.
The horrors unfolding in Japan are unimaginable to most of us. The scale of disruption – let alone the outpouring of grief – are crippling to individuals, institutions and society as a whole. When a nation is under this much stress, external assistance is needed in many forms.
Enter Google. What has emerged in the last few days is not simply compassionate thinking from the world’s largest online media business; it’s a blueprint in how well-focused socially responsible efforts from large organisations can prove game-changing for people in stricken environments.
Person Finder applies Google’s software prowess to the task of looking for individuals in a landscape where the data points are sketchy. It gives a simple data interface to people who are searching and people who want to be discovered. Consistent data structures for the fields, combined with the legendary speed of Google’s search is allowing a matchmaking process that would take several man days per query in the offline databases of telephone call centres.
The recent earthquake in New Zealand saw the toolkit used extensively, and in Japan it is clearly playing an important role.
Internet veterans will remember the net’s heritage that comes from the ARPNET projects in North America, themselves designed to find ways communications networks could survive national disasters. Google’s Person Finder talks to that legacy, but provides a contemporary civilian toolkit that any relief agency will gravitate to, and with Google’s mirroring cloud based solutions it’s a platform that seems unquestionably resilient. We suspect much more on this to come…