Google has officially opened up its Person Finder Web-based tool in response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that hit Nepal this morning, giving those looking for information about friends and loved ones a way to get crowd-sourced information about their status—if it exists.
According to officials, the earthquake struck an area between Kathmandu and Pokhara. The current death toll stands at approximately 1,130 people so far, and more than 1,700 people were injured as a result of the earthquake—which reduced a number of buildings, temples, and other historic monuments in the Nepalese capital to rubble.
Google's Person Finder tool is relatively simple, and it's also accessible via mobile devices for those who don't have access to a computer just yet. If you're on the web, you just have to pull up the page and indicate whether you're looking for a person or you have information about a person in the affected area.
If the former, you'll enter a person's name—or parts of the person's name—and Google will let you know if there's a match with anyone in its database. If so, you can then select the particular person, which will take you to a miniature profile of-sorts that Google has created. Otherwise, you can create a new missing person profile yourself.
On said profile, those looking for a person can post any identifying information they know about the individual: his or her name, alternate names, sex, age, home address, or any helpful descriptions. You can upload a photo or enter one by its URL, add links to a person's other social network profiles, and a time at which you want the missing person record to expire (anywhere from a month to a year from the date you enter it). You can also enter your own information on the profile and ask to receive notifications if anyone else posts any updates about the missing person.
On the flip side, if you have information about a person that you want others to know about, you can enter their first and last name on Google's Person Finder to start filling in information for a pre-existing profile. (You can also make a new report for a person who isn't already in the Person Finder database.)
The reporting page lets you indicate the person's status, any message you want to leave for that person (or others looking for them), as well as the person's last potential known location. You can indicate whether you've physically spoken with the person after the disaster, and you can attach a photo as well. Like before, you are also asked to leave your contact information in case anybody else wants to get in touch with you about said person's status or whereabouts.
If you're in the area of the Nepal earthquake, you can probably also use Facebook's "Safety Check" feature to let others know you're OK.
No comments:
Post a Comment