Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company reports on Google's new plan for giving out $3 million after the next natural disaster in America as a way to measure if giving cash is the most effective form of relief aid. 

• Google’s engineers will use satellite and census data to figure out exactly which areas seem hardest hit and most critically affected. How can this data be utilized in other countries as well?

• Here's how to protect U.S. communities from future natural disasters. 

Every natural disaster is different, and how people respond in their aftermath is different, too. For aid groups that help in recovery efforts, this makes it difficult to figure out what exactly is the most effective way of helping: One family might need to prioritize repairing their car over rebuilding their house, because they still have to commute to work. Another might need specialized food or medicine. And aid groups sending truckloads of unrequested supplies can clog up already cluttered fallout zones with stuff that just spoils or has to be trashed because people needed a new roof, not a donation of blankets.

One simple fix for this problem is to just give cash to the impacted people and trust that they’ll know best how to spend it. Giving cash as aid is a trend that’s been gaining traction as a strategy in international aid and recently was employed after Hurricanes Maria and Harvey in the U.S. Now two major tech players are working together to try to measure just how much more effective it is to give cash instead of goods after a disaster, with the hopes of pushing aid organizations to ask themselves harder questions about how effective the help they give really is.

Read the full article about Google's response to the next natural disaster by Ben Paynter at Fast Company.