Giving Compass' Take:

• Fast Company explains how aid organization are using Facebook’s Disaster Maps to locate people who evacuated for Hurricane Florence and provide them with the basic necessities they need to survive.

• How does social media help aid people affected by natural disasters in general? What are the pros and cons of using such platforms to assist in recovery efforts?

• Here's how you can help the communities affect by Hurricane Florence. 

On Friday, September 14, Hurricane Florence made landfall along the North Carolina coast, prompting high winds and massive flooding throughout the region. All of that was in the forecast. But at the same time, disaster response agencies faced some vexing questions: What were the people warned to evacuate actually doing? And where exactly had they fled?

In what has become an increasingly common tactic, many organizations including the Direct Relief, and the Red Cross, turned to Facebook data to provide some answers. Last year, Facebook launched Disaster Maps, an initiative through its Data for Good division that tracks the geographic coordinates of user signals to show trends in people’s movements during a crisis.

The result is a series of time-stamped images that can help emergency responders get a rough idea of how a situation is really unfolding, and where their services might be needed most. All of the data is aggregated in a way that makes it anonymous. It’s also collected automatically, as long as the social network users have their location services enabled.

At least a dozen nonprofit groups began using the service in 2017, including Direct Relief, which provides medical supplies to overtaxed hospitals and health centers in times of critical need. In 2017, for instance, the group used Disaster Maps data to help inform where they staged respiration mask depots for residents dealing with Southern California’s massive wildfires.

Read the full article about Facebook’s Disaster Maps by Ben Paynter at Fast Company.