Typhoon Haiyan, known as Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, was one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, which devastated portions of Southeast Asia, particularly the Philippines, on November 8, 2013. It is the deadliest Philippine typhoon on record, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.
Recent storms in Philippines history gave birth to the People finder database powered by Google. During typhoon Yolanda, the people finder was a vital tool for people across the globe to track the situation of their relatives. This proved to be successful and is now adapted by more organizations to help people track relatives during calamities.
The vast use of ICT had a great impact in terms of informing others on what is happening during this calamity. The typhoon is talked about on social networking sites and the storm became a trend world wide, dubbing that Typhoon Yolanda is one of the strongest typhoons in world history.
Even finding people who is affected by the storm is easy with the internet. With just a few clicks away, you’ll know immediately what your loved ones are doing.
ICT helps in connection people even when calamities occur.
Google Person Finder is an open source web application that provides a message board for survivors, family, and loved ones affected by a natural disaster to post and search for information about each other’s status and updates. It was first created by Google engineers in response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
Aside from the Philippines, Google also deployed their project to countries such as Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, USA, Japan, New Zealand, Thailand and Nepal.
Information and Communication Technology ( ICT ) has a Great role in the society as it affects and creates a change with the result of our current generation. It unites and reconnects people from all over the world. And as a part of a society in this generation, we depend upon technology able to gain the charity we need and a voice; to spread awareness to unreachable places we cannot travel to.
REFERENCES
http://www.rappler.com/move-ph/issues/
#YOLANDAPH: People Finder 