Facebook's 'Safety Check' Allows Users to Notify Others of Safety During Disasters

[bradl]

i always wonder how you guys can live there. id be scared to death. watching tornados on tv already gives me an unpleasent feeling.

I tend to think about it the same way that Jeff Dunham and Walter do.

I was born and raised in Tornado Alley. That stretch of land gets on average 130 - 140 tornados per season. But the good thing about that, as well as for those living in areas prone to hurricanes, is that they can be predicted. We know when they are going to come, and can get into shelter well beforehand.

Now.. where I am currently at (California/Nevada), earthquakes are more prone, and we really don't have a way of predicting those. They just happen.

I'm roughly 80 miles from Napa, in Sacramento. We felt that earthquake, even though we are more seismically stable than Napa, Oakland, or San Francisco. Even when living in Las Vegas, we felt the earthquake in Ludlow in 1999. I didn't know that there are 7 active faults in Las Vegas, though they go off all the time, and produce nothing more than a 2.3 quake at the most (shows at the casinos put off more activity than that).

So I can see where this does come in handy.

BL.

 

[seebee3]

Great feature, but in many natural disasters, telecommunications have a tendency to be affected. What then? Now the family and friends have even more cause for worry even though the person any be fine.

 

[Mr Hands]

So next time there's water main break 50 miles away, Facebook is going to ask me if I'm safe.

Translation: this is a tool Facebook is using to check to make sure "active users" really are active users... when they sell your data it goes for more money.

Oh yeah, that's always their motive. Screw facebook. I have an account, and I sure don't live in Dubai like it says I do.

I have noticed nearly half of the people I see on there (I only use it for news, BBC, CNN, RT, etc.) have fake profiles. I wonder just how many 'real' profiles there really are. There's gotta be millions if not billions of fake ones... can you imagine what all of that gathered info is really doing for the people paying for it? I mean it seems to me a lot of it must be bad or junk info.. so what's the point? Ya follow? lol

 

[Joz3d]

Yeah, there needs to be a third option: "I need help"

 

[bradl]

Great feature, but in many natural disasters, telecommunications have a tendency to be affected. What then? Now the family and friends have even more cause for worry even though the person any be fine.

This is a good point. Sandy was a perfect example of that, where no-one could get a signal to save their lives, that they were crowding around Starbucks for WiFi, while landline payphones still worked.

And when you think about it, it is a hell of a lot more comforting to hear the voice of a loved one telling you they are safe than a Facebook message.

BL.

 

[kilcher]

As someone who has family in tornado states, I'm ok with this.

Agreed. Last November we had a tornado go right through our subdivision, 633 homes destroyed. Our home was ok but houses 4 blocks behind us were totalled. We had no power for several days. It was next to impossible to get in our out of our subdivision for several days (police blockades). As much as people like to rag on Facebook it was the only way most of us could find out what was going on. It was also a huge help in the following weeks and months for getting help, supplies, and volunteers into the area.

I was always one of those people who didn't take tornado warnings too seriously. But not after seeing up close what they can do. It's heartbreaking, I don't know how else to describe it.

 

[bradl]

Agreed. Last November we had a tornado go right through our subdivision, 633 homes destroyed. Our home was ok but houses 4 blocks behind us were totalled. We had no power for several days. It was next to impossible to get in our out of our subdivision for several days (police blockades). As much as people like to rag on Facebook it was the only way most of us could find out what was going on. It was also a huge help in the following weeks and months for getting help, supplies, and volunteers into the area.

I was always one of those people who didn't take tornado warnings too seriously. But not after seeing up close what they can do. It's heartbreaking, I don't know how else to describe it.

Sounds like you were in Moore, OK.

BL.

 

[jtara]

Because that's what we need to do in a disaster - flood the Internets.

OK, seriously... a push notification is a small bit of data. There are pros and cons.

We do need to think about replacing the functionality of SMS, which is going away. SMS is great in disasters because it uses a TINY bit of bandwidth, gets preferred slots, and persists until it gets the message through. It has consistently proven itself when voice calls will not go through. But carriers are all going to messaging over IP, which requires a lot more infrastructure to be working correctly, and I dunno about prioritization.

My concern is that this brings people to media-rich bandwidth-hungry Facebook during a disaster, where people will chat-up their experiences and start posting videos. Exactly the wrong place to be.

In an earthquake I:

- turn on CNN on the TV, which (MAY not, but might...) make any demands on communication infrastructure (but that is debatable with modern cable systems... over-the-air local TV or radio is better, assuming stations are broadcasting - who has radio in their home today though?) or,

- Google "earthquake" (I used to go to the USGS site. Google earthquake will give you quicker information and make fewer infrastructure demands.) Google has recently added specific handling of emergencies, and during an earthquake Google "earthquake" will give you a summary of current information and links to current information. One would presume they handle tornados, hurricanes, etc. similarly.

Either one will give you quick information. Then:

- SMS friends and family. While we still have SMS, that is.

We all have to realize that by using the Internet in an emergency, we might be adding to the problem. So, lets be careful how we use it. Cellular carriers will "help" us to use THEIR bandwidth efficiently, and will shut off data services in an emergency. (It has happened here in San Diego - don't recall if it was due to earthquake, fire, or power outage - but ATT shut down data services in the affected area, and it was the right thing to do in order to let calls and SMS go through.)

We need to make sure in replacing legacy services like SMS that the replacement technology is at least as reliable, and provides for prioritization of emergency traffic. Exactly how you identify "emergency traffic" is an interesting topic, but, certainly, there should be some plan in place by carriers to at least block YouTube, NetFlix, etc. and free up bandwidth, because now we have messaging services that depend on IP.

 

[kilcher]

Sounds like you were in Moore, OK.

BL.

Washington IL. Ours was in November of last year. Almost all of the homes are being rebuilt but they're just now getting to the point where they're finished or almost finished (most probably still have 2-3 more months). It's amazing to think most of those people still aren't in their homes almost a year later.