How Much Has Social Media Changed Disaster Relief?

Has the rise of social media permanently changed the contours of global disaster relief? That's what Chris Slagh argues over at Secure Nation. And less than two months after the tech community sprang to action in assisting Haiti, the global response to Chile's earthquake would seem to further substantiate the case.

Registering an 8.8 in magnitude, Chile's quake was far more powerful than the one that hit Haiti on Jan. 12 -- some 500 times greater in strength, though not nearly as deadly. Thanks to greater wealth and history of preparedness (not to mention the presence of building codes), the country was far better-cushioned from the quake's impact. (To date, two million people have been made homeless and at least 700 killed, an order exponentially smaller than the damage inflicted on Haiti.) Within just hours of the quake, much of the telephone service in central Chile had already been restored.

The tech community that was galvanized in the aftermath of Haiti's quake has likewise responded to Chile's disaster with incredible speed. Over on our Social Entrepreneurship blog, Nathaniel documents how Google has reconfigured its person-finding tool for Chile, allowing people to submit reports about who they're searching for in the rubble. (Already, their system is tracking some 40,000 records.)

Meanwhile, he notes that crisis mappers with Ushahidi are rallying a global network of volunteers, one spanning schools from Boston's Tufts University to universities in Mexico and Colombia. Less than 48 hours after Ushahidi launched its Chile crisis-mapping platform, for example, volunteers had already mapped over 100 reports. As Patrick Meier reports, "Team simply cloned the Ushahidi-Haiti version for Chile....So everything is actually moving twice as fast and so is the CrisisMappers Group."

It's a testimonial how well responders to Haiti's crisis managed to seed future action. As models like Ushahidi demonstrate, if you build it, they will come -- or at least some people will. Still, though, as Nathaniel writes, the ongoing question remains one of how to distribute these platforms on the ground. While these tools have robust potential for aid workers and similar networks, for people immediately affected in disaster zones, learning about and accessing them can remain a far more remote process.

Social media has some very specific uses -- helping mobilize donations, creating a platform for micro-volunteerism, helping crowdsource information. But as Secure Nation notes, it's also no panacea. Disaster relief remains a dirty, difficult and (often) long-term enterprise -- as cases like Haiti, where 70% of the newly homeless still haven't received the rudimentary protection of tarps or tents -- continue to remind us.

Photo Credit: Peter π