Web 2.0 Tools in Times of Crisis

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday evening has highlighted the usefulness of Web 2.0 tools as a means of sharing information in times of crisis. Few phone calls have been reaching the Caribbean nation following Tuesday’s quake, however, a flurry of texts, twitters, photos, status updates, and other online communications have been published from social networking sites and Web 2.0 tool users throughout the disaster area.

In the hours following the quake, Web 2.0 tools were instrumental in the collection and aggregation of basic information. With much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins, Twitter updates provided an outlet for citizens to present real-time reports, a handful of videos uploaded to YouTube offered a physical view of the destruction, and pictures on Flickr showed some of the victims of the disaster.

The Google Earth platform has made data available to U.N. organizations and is encouraging users with ground knowledge to update the map of Haiti with disaster response data. One of Google Earth’s imagery partners, GeoEye, has provided post-earthquake satellite imagery of the country. This is a remarkable step forward in making data available in order to create a shared map of the country. What we need now is to systematically integrate these tools into response and recovery efforts, including a process for managing and sifting through the plethora of data to find what’s most relevant to the various groups who need it most.