ICCM 2013: Raquel Romano, Google: How Can Crisis Maps Meet Information Needs of Affected People?
Channel: CrisisMappersNet
Date: 24/02/2014

Raquel Romano from Google Crisis Map discusses, "How Can Crisis Maps Meet Information Needs of Affected People?"  "When Google Crisis Map was launched, one of its primary goals was to give people affected by a crisis a simple, familiar, accessible tool for discovering and exploring relevant, high-quality data from a single entry point. In the last year, we have continued to pursue that goal by supporting more data formats, providing ways to organize large numbers of layers,  improving the mobile user experience, and exploring avenues for users to annotate official data. At the same time, we have been asking our users and potential users to tell us precisely what questions are most pressing for them during a crisis. And we have been asking ourselves whether the data featured on our maps and the way we present that data is making it possible for them to answer those questions.

In addition to presenting a few exciting new Google Crisis Map features and several others that are in the works, we would like to share recent findings from two sources: 1) direct feedback from hundreds of crisis map users who have let us know what they did or did not find useful about the maps we've published over the last year, and 2) an ethnographic study in New Orleans of people from a range of ages, genders, ethnicities, communities, and socio-economic profiles who shared their most critical information needs before, during, and after hurricanes.

What has become clear as we enable official agencies, media outlets, and individual users to contribute data relevant to a crisis, is that the burden falls on the end-user to make sense of it all: from scientific data (hurricane cones, wind speeds, rain gauges) to the status of social or commercial services sourced by news and private sector agencies (road closures, gasoline availability, power outages), to hyperlocal, near real-time observations by affected people. The next challenge will not be to simply increase the amount and variety of  data that end users must wade through, but given the increasing availability of data, to enable simple, intuitive ways for them to quickly find answers to urgent questions at the time of a crisis."@romanorar