Skip to main content

Google Public Alerts

       I was in the office having my lunch today with my colleagues, when we felt the tremors of a 5.2 magnitude earthquake whose epicenter was at Bahadurgarh in Haryana about 46 km (28 miles) from Delhi - the capital of India. I went back to my desk and that is when I came across this new initiative of Google - Google Public Alerts. Google Public Alerts is Google’s new platform for disseminating emergency messages such as evacuation notices for hurricanes, and everyday alerts such as storm warnings.

       Google Public Alerts is actually a project of the Google Crisis Response Team, supported by Google.org which uses Google's strengths in information and technology to build products and advocate for policies that address global challenges.Google Public Alerts has started by showing relevant weather, public safety and earthquake alerts from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Weather Service, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) when you search on Google Maps.

       You can see the latest and the most important alerts from across the web when and where they are needed the most.


       Do write in to say what you think of Google's new initiative - Google Public Alerts.
Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousMarch 10, 2012 at 3:52 PM

    Dear Google,
    re: Google Public Alerts initiative

    Thank you for this service. I think is an answer to a global need for maps of disaster areas at the time a disaster occurs. Successful disaster response begins with a map. Incident Support Teams need to know where the disaster happened in order to procede to the site to assist the affected area with initial response and recovery.
    The next step for google would be to come up with a means to present the incident area by a perimeter polygon. Please see my discussions on LinkedIn Disaster Researchers and Disaster Management Professionals.
    Vivian A. Wasson, M.S., LSIT
    Springfield, Missouri
    GIS Specialist/Disaster Reservist
    Springfield-Greene County Office of Emergency Management
    Southwest Missouri Incident Support Team (SWMOIST)
    Wasson2008@live.missouristate.edu
    http://www.linkedin.com/pub/vivian-a-wasson-m-s-lsit/48/6b9/308

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Please leave your comments here...

Recommended for You

Where does Google get it's live traffic data from?

Referring to a post that I wrote earlier, Google’s - Live traffic Layer , ever wondered how Google collected this data? I was wondering the other day, how Google received live data to display it on their maps as a layer! I looked up the web and found something very interesting and am sharing the same with you all. As we all know, the traffic layer is available most accurately in several states in USA. Most major metro areas in the US have sensors embedded in their highways. These sensors track real time traffic data. Easy to miss at high speeds (hopefully anyway, traffic permitting), more commonly noticed may be the similar sensors that often exist at many busy intersections that help the traffic lights most efficiently let the most amount of people through. The information from these tracking sensors is reported back to the Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT uses this data to update some of the digital signs that report traffic conditions in many metro areas. They als
17 comments
Read more

Geodesic Polyline

    Today we will have a look at a very interesting polyline example - "The geodesic polyline". Now the first question that will pop is "What is geodesic?". Mathematically, geodesic means the shortest line between two points on a mathematically defined surface, as a straight line on a plain or an arc of a great circle or sphere.     The next question after reading the above definition is clearly, "Why do we need geodesic polylines?" and that would be followed up with "What is this Great Circle?". We will discuss this first, before we move on to the actual example today. The example is very very similar to the normal polyline example, with just a small change.     Having said so, I will now try to explain why we need a geodesic polyline? The shortest distance between two locations on the earth is rarely a straight line as the earth is roughly spherical in nature. So any two points on the earth, even if they are very close lie on a curve and n
5 comments
Read more

Playing with the markers and info window bubbles...

    In the last few posts, we have seen some marker examples and some information window examples. Now, lets do something interesting combining these two things. Just writing that "This is an info window" in the information bubble is not very interesting! And I know this...Have gone through the same phase!     So, today we will do something interesting! We will display the latitude- longitude co-ordinates of the point that the user clicks on the map! Doing this is not at all complex! Copy paste the following code and you will see for yourself a map coming to life!     The output of the above code looks as seen in the result section above! If you have any queries regarding the above code please comment on the blog post or feel free to contact me at my mail ID .
3 comments
Read more

Form info window

         Today we will look at a Google Maps API v3 example to add a form in the information bubble! This is usually required when we wish to accept some data/information from the user! This data can be saved to a server in the form of an XML file or a database! The information can then be retrieved back at a later stage, when necessary!          In this example we will only look at form in the information bubble! The connectivity part with the server will be discussed in another post! So, today's code snippet is as seen below! <html> <head> <title> Google Maps API v3 - Adding marker and info window on Click and creating a form in the infowindow with the lat-lng information in it. </title> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/api/js?sensor=false"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var map;    //When using event as a parameter to a function declare map, strictly as a
5 comments
Read more

The bitter divorce of PSD and HTML

    Today's article is an interesting post that I read. The original post in Portuguese and authored by Fabricio Teixeira  can be found at arquiteturadeinformacao  (Now don't ask me pronounce this =)).     Some are calling it the death of PSD  but I prefer calling it a "divorce". PSD and HTML are both healthy and living strong, just that they do not live together anymore. "PSD to HTML", which for years was the most accurate and sometimes the only right path to web design process, seems like has its days counted.     Firstly you draw a page in Photoshop; impeccable layout, representing exactly how the web pages would appear when opened in a browser. After a sign-off on this picture (PSD) from the client the front end developer transforms these pictures into HTML, CSS and Javascript. The assets are cut, one by one, exported from the PSD and integrated into the HTML. Plugins and new tools are created in the process and some companies even charge upto $1
5 comments
Read more