Google has scrambled to post online resources for people who want information about the deadly storm Sandy, including maps showing evacuation routes and shelters and a new service that sends emergency alerts to Google users.
On Monday night, the company introduced the new service, public alerts, to show warnings about natural disasters and emergencies based on information from government agencies like Ready.gov and the National Weather Service. Google said it had planned to introduce the service later, but sped up the process in response to Sandy. In the future, it will add alerts from other services, like Nixle, which publishes messages from the local police.
The alerts show up in response to searches on Google.com and Google Maps, and appear unprompted on the cellphones of people with the latest version of Android, through Google Now.
“This is part of our continuing mission to bring emergency information to people when and where it is relevant,†N igel Snoad, a product manager for Google Crisis Response, wrote in a company blog post.
Using Google Maps, the company has created a map of the storm area. Markers show where power is out; the location of evacuation shelters and routes; traffic conditions; and where surges, floods and high winds are expected. There are also public alerts. People can choose different views, including the addition of cloud imagery or location-based Webcams and YouTube videos to the map.
Google has also published a New York City map with shelters, Webcams, evacuation routes and other information from NYC Open Data, the city's Web site for sharing data with software developers.
The public alerts and maps are products of Google Crisis Response, part of Google.org, the company's nonprofit arm, whose focus is to use Google products and engineers to help solve problems. It was started in 2005 in response to Hurricane Katrina and has published online resources for disasters like hur ricanes and oil spills since then, including the person finder feature that was used after the Japan earthquake.
For the Sandy maps, Google has drawn information from the Red Cross, the National Hurricane Center, Weather.gov, Storyful and the United States Naval Research Laboratory, among others.
A search on Tuesday for “New Haven flooding†showed a public alert about coastal flooding. A search for “hurricane Sandy†showed, above the usual search results, links to government Web sites with storm updates and to Google's crisis map.
“We hope that you get the information you need to make preparations and stay safe if you are in the area,†Ka-Ping Yee, a software engineer at Google Crisis Response, wrote in a company blog post.
