Facebook,international agencies to develop disaster maps

CAIRO – 8 June 2017: Facebook announced Wednesday its collaboration with UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and the World Food Program (WFP) to develop “disaster maps.” The maps will serve as tools to track natural disasters including floods, earthquakes, and fire. These maps can help humanitarian organizations assess mass people movement and better plan their emergency assistance and response in emergencies.

The generated disaster maps will base on Facebook's Safety Check feature, aggregated location information people have chosen to share with Facebook, and data from partner humanitarian organizations.



One year ago, Facebook presented an early version of the disaster maps applied for Hurricane Hermnine in the United States. In a 30 minute interval, it was possible to monitor how people were moving away from the path of the storm and the locations they were settling in through the map.

The initiative illustrates an example on how technology can provide a tool to save lives. This initiative is part of Facebook “Build a global Community” guide that was published in February 2017. The guide includes

five areas of focus

for Facebook to contribute to building a global community. The areas include building supportive communities, safe communities, informed communities, civically-engaged communities, and inclusive communities.

On its official page Facebook said on June 7, “Facebook can help response organizations paint a more complete picture of where affected people are located so they can determine where resources — like food, water and medical supplies — are needed and where people are out of harm’s way.”


Disaster maps demo -Facebook newsroom

Facebook created three different types of maps to help track survivors after a natural disaster and to provide humanitarian agencies with quick and accurate data on where help is desperately needed.

The first map is the “Location density maps”: these maps show where people are located before, during and after a disaster. Facebook will compare this information to historical records, like population estimates based on satellite images. With traditional communication networks often rendered useless by natural disasters, this type of data can help response organizations understand areas impacted by a natural disaster.

The second type is “Movement maps”: these maps illustrate patterns of survivors’ movement over a period of several hours. Understanding these patterns can help response organizations better predict where to deploy resources, gain insight into patterns of evacuation, and predict where traffic will be most congested.

The third type is “Safety Check maps”: these maps base on Facebook Safety Check feature. It may help organizations understand where people feel safe enough to check in and then organizations can clearly see where they should be focusing their efforts.

Facebook will share the generated information with organizations that have the capacity to act on the data and respect the privacy standards. It will start with UNICEF, IFRC, and WFP. Overtime, the program will include additional organizations and governments.