Hi, I’m Disaster Bot - An Indonesian mapping platform is turning social media chatter into life-saving information during natural disasters

Jakarta floods, and Jakartans tweet. When they wake up in the morning and see the thick smog of car exhaust and coal fumes outside the window, they tweet. When they realize the road is blocked because of high water, they tweet.

Today, if a Twitter user in Jakarta tweets the word “banjir,”which means flood in Indonesian, they get a jaunty response from a Twitter account with the handle u/PetaBencana: “Hi, I’m Disaster Bot. To report flooding near you, reply with #flood.” If they do that, the bot will send them a link to a site where they can locate the flood on a map, report how high the water is, and submit a photo of the damage. PetaBencana’s success in Indonesia, where it is now used by government agencies, NGOs, and ordinary citizens, has led to it being adopted in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

Perfect sort of bot to be developed as part of hackathon events to crowdsource citizen reports.

See How a ‘Disaster Bot’ in Indonesia maps crises in realtime

#technology #socialmedia #crowdsourcing #disaster #hackathon