(Cross-posted from the Google.org Blog)Like the rest of the world, we’ve been transfixed by the images and news coming out of the northeastern part of Japan over the past six days. Our hearts go out to those who have been affected by this devastation and we’re deeply grateful to those who are working to keep us safe. In the meantime, Googlers in Japan and elsewhere around the world have been working around the clock to try and help improve the flow of information. Here are some of the recent developments we’ve been working on:
Centralized informationOur
Crisis Response page—now in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean—organizes all of Google’s efforts, with links to valuable resources such as emergency hotlines, Person Finder, blackout schedules, maps and links to relief organizations receiving donations.
Ninety-three percent of mobile users in Japan don’t have top-of-the-line smartphones, so we’ve recently
optimized this Crisis Response page to make it more readable for a wider range of devices. You can also access that version by scanning this QR code:
Person FinderWithin the first two hours of the earthquake, we launched
Person Finder so people can enter the names of those they’re looking for or have found. You can now also search by
entering mobile phone numbers to see if they match any listings. And as with the Crisis Response page, Person Finder has also been
optimized for those without smartphones. There are currently more than 250,000 records in the database (including names shared with us by NHK, the national broadcaster in Japan) and we’ve heard
several reports of people who have found their loved ones safe.
To help the many people in shelters get word of their whereabouts to loved ones, we’re also asking people in shelters to take photos of the handwritten lists of names of current residents and
email them to us. Those photos are automatically uploaded to a public
Picasa Web Album. We use scanning technology to help us manually add these names to Person Finder; but it’s a big job that can’t be done automatically by computers alone, so
we welcome volunteers with Japanese language skills who want to help out.
Satellite imagesWe’re also working with our satellite partners GeoEye and DigitalGlobe to provide frequent updates to our imagery of the hardest-hit areas to first responders as well as the general public. You can view this imagery in this
Google Earth KML, browse it
online through Google Maps or look through our
Picasa album of before-and-after images of such places as
Minamisanriku and
Kesennuma.
MappingYou can follow developments on the ground by looking at several maps that track changing developments. We’ve
mapped rolling blackouts for areas that are affected by power outages. With data given to us by Honda, you can now see which roads have been recently passable on
this map or this user-made
Google Earth mashup with new satellite imagery. We’re also constantly updating a master map (in
Japanese and
English) with other data such as epicenter locations and evacuation shelters. And with information from the newspaper Mainichi, we’ve published a
partial list of shelters.
TranslationUse
Google Translate for Japanese and 56 other languages. You can paste in any text, or enter the address of any web page for automatic translation. We also just released an early experimental version of
Google Translate for Android to help non-Japanese speakers in affected areas.
DonationsVisit our
Crisis Response resource page to find opportunities to donate. When you donate to Japan relief efforts through Google Checkout, we absorb processing fees—so 100% of your money goes to the organizations. Google has also donated $250,000 to help the people of Japan recover.
To keep up with the latest developments on our efforts in Japan, follow
@googlejapan (tweets are mostly in Japanese) or
@earthoutreach (for our mapping and imagery efforts) on Twitter.
Posted by Nobu Makida, Product Manager, on behalf of the Google Japan and international Crisis Response teams
