Cross-posted from the Google Latin America Blog

After one of the worst floods in Acapulco, Guerrero, caused by recent tropical storms “Ingrid” and “Manuel” , the Google Crisis Response team has launched Person Finder to help the Mexican port respond to this disastrous situation. 

Person Finder is a web application that allows individuals to post and search for the status of relatives or friends affected by a disaster. This tool allows every user to share useful and important data (name, gender, age, location, photos and more) that helps locate and know about isolated or lost persons.



The site activated for Floods in Acapulco is accessible in English and Spanish all over the globe. Additionally, it allows you to receive notifications for the people you're searching for and to set an expiration date for the record you are uploading. It’s worth noting that Google is not responsible for updating the data and does not make any guarantees about its accuracy. Google Person Finder depends on individual users to update and remove records when no longer relevant. As an open source software platform, response teams and developers may use it in their own sites to contribute to the impact and response in emergency actions. 

Posted By Jack Fermon, Product Specialist

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Earlier this year we launched Google Public Alerts for the first time in Japan, covering earthquakes and tsunamis. Today, we’re expanding the service to include weather-related alerts for typhoons, blizzards, landslides and more.  

These new warnings will appear - as earthquake and tsunami alerts do now - on Google Search, Google Maps and Google Now, as well as the Google Public Alerts site, where you will also find minor weather alerts, such as advisories for high surf and dense fog.

If you happen to be in Tokyo at a time when a typhoon alert is issued, for example, Google Now will show you a card containing information about the typhoon alert, as well as any available evacuation instructions:

Example of a typhoon warning card on Google Now

You will also see alerts for severe weather events, like tornadoes and torrential rains, when you search for relevant information on Google Search and Google Maps on your desktop, tablet or smartphone:

Example of a Google Search result on a tablet showing a tornado warning

Example of a torrential rain warning on Google Maps

The Japan Meteorological Agency and Rescue Now’s commitment to providing this crisis data in a usable format to the public made these new alerts possible. We hope they will help people in Japan prepare for natural disasters and stay safe when they strike.

To learn more about Public Alerts, visit our Public Alerts homepage.

Posted by: Marilia Melo, Partner Technology Manager

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Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers is crucially important—breakthroughs don't happen without people to make them. We want students to not just be consumers of technology, but also creators of it; to enrich not only their own lives, but those of their communities. That's the motivation behind the Google RISE (Roots in Science and Engineering) Awards.

Given once a year, Google RISE Awards are designed to promote and support education initiatives to increase engagement in science and technology, especially computer science. Google grants awards of $15,000 - $50,000 USD to non-for-profit organizations around the world working to expand access to these fields for K-12/Pre-University students, specifically girls and underrepresented groups.

In 2013, 30 organizations received RISE grants—with projects ranging from robotics contests in Germany to programming challenge days for girls in New Zealand. In June, we brought all of our partners together for a Global Summit. It was an inspiring meeting, and since the Summit several organizations have begun to work together to expand their reach.

For example, our RISE partners in Nigeria, WAAW Foundation and W-TEC, have teamed up to organize a one-week residential Advanced STEM Camp. The program launched this week and will provide 27 public school girls exposure to robotics. Over in Argentina, an organization already connecting Belgium to Argentina is is now collaborating with another on programming workshops for students and teachers. And organizations in Liberia and India are sharing resources to overcome common challenges in access to technology for girls.

The hard work of RISE organizations has also drawn support from leading figures such as President Obama, Ireland’s Taoiseach Enda Kenny and HRH Prince Andrew.

We’re looking for more organizations to partner with in 2014. Submit your application by September 30, 2013. You can submit your application in English, French, Japanese, Russian or Spanish; all eligible countries are listed on our website. Show us what you can do to get students excited about STEM and CS!

Posted by Marielena Ivory, K12/Pre-University Education Outreach

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As Taiwan heads into another Typhoon season, the need for reliable and easily accessible information about where the next storm will hit and how to stay safe has never been more important.  That’s why we’re launching Google Public Alerts and a dedicated Google Crisis Map for Taiwan.

Starting today, relevant severe weather alerts for typhoons and flood related events in Taiwan will appear on the Google Public Alerts page as well as on Google Search, Google Maps and Google Now. Google Public Alerts is a platform designed to provide accurate and relevant emergency alerts when and where you need them.

If a typhoon alert is issued in Kaohsiung county, for example, the alert information will appear on your desktop and mobile screens when you search for relevant information on Google Search and Google Maps:

Example of a Google Search result showing a flood warning

Example of a typhoon warning on Google Maps for mobile

If you happen to be in Taiwan at a time when a typhoon warning is issued near you, Google Now on your Android or iOS device will show you a card containing information about the alert, as well as any available evacuation instructions:

Example of a typhoon warning card on Google Now

In addition to these Google Public Alerts tools, we’re also launching today a dedicated Google Crisis Map for Taiwan which will provide detailed information in times of crisis, including the ability to apply various layers of information to the map, such as shelter locations, storm radar, evacuation routes and more.

Our goal at Google Crisis Response is to provide citizens with the critical information needed in an emergency.  We’re able to provide this crisis map and Public Alerts in Taiwan thanks to the Central Weather Bureau, Water Resource Agency, Soil and Water Conservation Bureau, Directorate General of Highways and the National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction - their partnership and commitment to opening this data to the public enables Google and others to make critical and life-saving information more widely available.

We look forward to expanding Google Public Alerts to more countries and working with more warning providers soon. We encourage potential partners to read our FAQ and to consider putting data in an open format, such as the Common Alerting Protocol.

Posted by Eric Chu, Engineering Director, Google.org

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We know spectrum is an essential resource to power the future of the Internet. Using untapped spectrum can help improve broadband access in many parts of the world—as it’s doing in our trial in South Africa—and spark new innovation in wireless technology.

In March, we shared an update on our efforts to become a certified database administrator for a band of spectrum called the TV white spaces. Today, our database received final certification from the FCC.

This is an exciting step forward. With FCC certification, we can do more to help make spectrum available. We are ready to work with leaders in the wireless industry—those developing certified devices that can talk to a database—to help them gain access to TV White spaces spectrum to help bring new technologies and services to market. 

Our database has already helped to show that there is available spectrum out there--if you know where to look. For example, we used the database to help visualize available spectrum in Cape Town, South Africa and Dakar, Senegal. And, with spectrum sharing enabled by a database, multiple users can share spectrum, accessing what they they need when they need it, and allowing others to use it when they don’t. 
With more unused spectrum being put to good use, we hope to see more wireless innovation and wireless broadband access for users.

Posted by Alan Norman, Principal, Access

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As flooding continues to affect Alberta, the Google Crisis Response team has launched a new crisis map with emergency-related information.

To view the crisis map, visit: http://google.org/crisismap/2013-alberta-floods

This embeddable map shows evacuation zones, emergency shelter locations, public alerts, traffic conditions, and more. With help from the City of Calgary, Province of Alberta, CBC News and several local communities, the map uses open data to provide important information for people in affected areas.


We created the Google Crisis Map to help people find and use critical emergency information when they need it most.

See below for more information on embedding this map for your use, and keep an eye on the crisis map as we continue to add new information.

Our thoughts remain with everyone in Alberta affected by these floods, and with the many officials and first responders throughout the province whose resilience has united us all and will guide the recovery effort.

Posted by Leslie Church, Google Canada

How to embed the crisis map on your website:

Use this default code:

<iframe width="400" height="400" src="http://google.org/crisismap/2013-alberta-floods?hl=en&llbox=51.0886%2C50.9361%2C-113.8512%2C-114.2226&t=ROADMAP&layers=layer0%2C5%2C1340722113768&embedded=true" style="border: 1px solid #ccc"></iframe>

Or follow these simple steps:

• Select the layers you want ON, and zoom to the area you want to appear on your site.
• Hit the Share button at the top of the map.
• Copy the code in the field below “Paste HTML to embed in website”.
• Drop it into the HTML for your website.
• You can set the height and width of the map directly in the iframe code.

Note: The embed code will automatically display a map of the layers you have selected.

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Cross-posted from the Google Developers Blog

On June 1st and 2nd, thousands of developers from across the U.S. came together at nearly 100 different locations to participate in the first ever National Day of Civic Hacking. Using public data recently released by the government on topics like crime, health and the environment, developers built new applications that help address social challenges.

At the Googleplex in Mountain View, we hosted nearly 100 developers, statisticians, data scientists, and designers, who stayed long into the night hacking together prototypes that show how data on health and the environment can be used to enrich lives. Fusion Tables and Google App Engine were used to prototype, and groups relied on BigQuery as a workhorse to crunch the biggest datasets. Participants used Google+ Hangouts to connect with hackathons in other states and collaborated with Google Apps and platforms.

Here are a few highlights from the hackathon that stood out as useful, visually stunning, and informative ways to use public data:

• Eat Healthy for Less, the winner of our Mountain View hackathon, is a mobile web application that uses the Consumer Pricing Index to suggest healthy recipes that can be made on a budget.
• Data+, a reimagining of how we access data, can make exploring public datasets more intuitive and easily understandable for everyone.
• Detoxic.org is a web experience and Android app that shows you toxic sites and landfills nearby that you might not know about so that you can take civic action against toxic waste.

Many of the ideas have great potential, and we are encouraging participants to continue their work. We hope that the National Day of Civic Hacking will be a catalyst for innovation in this space, and encourage you to keep track of our tools for civic developers at g.co/civicdevelopers.

Congratulations and thanks to everyone who participated!

Posted by Patrick Copeland, Engineering Director, Google.org

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To help bring more of Africa online, we often work with others: offering programs to get universities connected, supporting nonprofit innovators to increase engineering know-how, and partnering to test the use of TV White Spaces for broadband access in underserved areas. 

TV White Spaces--unused channels in the broadcast TV spectrum--have the potential to help cover the last mile of Internet access. The last mile, or final connection to the user, is one of the biggest challenges to improving connectivity in Sub-Saharan Africa and other emerging markets. TV White Spaces are important because they offer available and underutilized spectrum (especially in less developed areas), allow signals to travel over long distances, and can enable a lower-cost alternative for broadband. 

Many are catching on to the promise of TV White Spaces, developing technologies and advancing regulation to use this spectrum. Last week, 25 countries, 17 in Africa, joined the TV White Spaces & Dynamic Spectrum Africa Forum in Dakar, Senegal to discuss what’s next. The event, supported by Google, Microsoft, the Association for Progressive Communications, Afrinic, Senegal’s Minister of Communication, Telecommunications and Digital Economy and ISOC Senegal, focused on a few key themes that highlight the potential of the technology.

• TV White Spaces are available. Using our spectrum database, we shared a visual of available white space in Senegal. There is more than 90 MHz available in Dakar alone, and more across the country--spectrum that could be used for broadband. Compared to the San Francisco Bay area, the number of available channels is remarkable.

• Trials show that TV White Spaces work in practice. Trials in Kenya, Malawi, Singapore, and the UK have demonstrated that white spaces can deliver broadband without interfering with licensed users of spectrum. With the CSIR Meraka Institute, TENET, e-Schools Network, the Wireless Access Providers’ Association, Comsol Wireless Solutions, Carlson Wireless, and Neul, Google has supported one such trial to provide broadband to 10 schools in Cape Town. CSIR shared initial results from the trial, which demonstrate that TV White Spaces radios can operate without interfering with TV broadcast.

• Regulation can pave a path in African markets. ICASA, the South African regulator, plans to use trial outcomes to evaluate possible rules for use of the TV White Spaces. Other regulators showing interest in TV White Spaces for broadband included Senegal, as well as Malawi, where less than 9% of the population receives broadcast TV and many channels are left available.

• Developing new technologies for TV White Spaces.  Radio manufacturers shared how TV White Spaces radios can talk to a database, which tells the radio which channels are available in a given geography. Adaptrum and Carlson presented the results of deployments of these radios, in Kenya and South Africa respectively.

From trials to databases to radios, these efforts show that players are stepping up to use TV White Spaces to help enable Internet access in West Africa and beyond. That’s good news for a future where more people have access to the Web.

Posted by Alan Norman, Access Principal

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On Monday, the Oklahoma City region was struck by a devastating 2-mile wide tornado. Entire neighborhoods and schools have been destroyed, people have lost their lives and thousands remain displaced. Our hearts go out to all those who were affected by this terrible tragedy.

In response, Google’s Crisis Response team launched a crisis map for the event, which includes Red Cross shelters, traffic alerts, storm reports and other information.

Googlers from our Mayes County Data Center, which is located approximately 2.5 hours from Moore, Oklahoma, are also volunteering in the community. We are currently working with Verizon Wireless and Acer to set up Chromebook stations with free Internet. Residents can go to St. Andrew’s United Methodist Church and the Moore Community Center, which are acting as Red Cross shelters. Chromebooks are also set up at Walmart store #277, 501 19th St. Moore, Oklahoma. We hope people find this useful.

To aid in both immediate and long-term recovery efforts in the region, we’re also making a $250,000 donation to relief work in the area. We’ll also continue to work with the many nonprofits and responders who are providing lifesaving resources on the ground.

Posted by: Mike Wooten, operations manager of Mayes County Data Center

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(Cross-posted on the Google Canada blog: English, French)

With floods and spring showers in the forecast, Canadians can now receive warnings of drastic weather changes directly to their mobile device or desktop.

Today we’re launching official severe weather notifications for Canada in English and French on Google Public Alerts. Relevant severe weather alerts will now appear on the Google Public Alerts page, in Google Search and Google Maps on both desktop and mobile, and in Google Now.

Providing people with warnings and information before severe weather hits is critical to helping ensure safety. Google Public Alerts is a platform designed to provide accurate and relevant emergency alerts when and where you need them. An alert will appear on your desktop or mobile screens when you search for relevant keywords such as flood or with location-based queries like Toronto. On Android devices running Google Now, alerts will appear automatically on Cards.

We couldn’t have launched Public Alerts in Canada without Public Safety Canada and Environment Canada. Their meteorological data will ensure our users are notified of severe weather when relevant. We also appreciate their commitment to open data standards such as the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP).

Here are example alerts in Canada surfaced on Search from a mobile device and Google Maps Mobile

       

For more information, or to see all active public alerts, visit our homepage at www.google.org/publicalerts. If you are a data provider, we also provide instructions here that will help you get your emergency data ready for Google Public Alerts.

We’re always working to improve Public Alerts, so please send us your feedback using the link at the far right of our Google Public Alerts homepage.

Posted by Steve Hakusa, Public Alerts Engineer

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