How to Help Earthquake Victims of Nepal via Computer

On Saturday, 25th April, 2015 11:56 AM Local time (UTC + 5:45) a biggest tragedy of the century hit the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal. An earthquake of 7.9 Richter scale in magnitude with its epicenter located at Barpak, Gorkha devastated the central region of country effecting more than 15 districts of Nepal. The effect was extreme in the capital city Kathmandu, its valley and surrounding districts like Sindhupalchowk, Nuwakot, Kavrepalanchowk and Dhading. Beyond that several other districts around Kathmandu valley were affected. More than 8 million people were affected by this earthquake and around 300 thousand houses are damaged (partial and complete).

 Many countries like China, USA, Japan, Bhutan, Israel, India, Canada, Pakistan, Bangladesh, New Zealand, Australia and many others have come ahead for rescue as well as for relief efforts. Nepal Army, Armed Police Force and Nepal Police all are providing uncountable efforts to manage the destroyed structures as well as bringing people out of those wrecked and broken structures. Also many youths, elders, actors, officers and various organizations are volunteering for relief efforts. Many people who are out of the affected areas are also eager to help and support in the relief efforts but due to geographic and various other constraints they are not been able to do it. So I have decided to recite some of the ways that anyone with basic computer skills and active internet connection can play some role in helping people indirectly. Few of the ways will be described below:

 1) Mapping: Many of the rescuers in Nepal are not been able to track the actual victims due to lack of proper map. Many roads and free spaces that exist in maps are not exactly in the position they ought to be. Also many structures that are destroyed are also not effectively given. So in order to update maps people who are familiar with those locality can volunteer in updating maps so that rescue team can easily reach their destination. For mapping the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap ( www.hotosm.org/updates/2015-04-26_hot_activities_for_nepal_response_report_2 ) is best to start with. It’s currently mapping Nepal’s road networks, buildings, residential areas, open spaces for the communication for helicopters and rescuers. It has a wiki page ( http://www.wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2015_nepal_earthquake ) which lists tasks and instructions for anyone with a computer and internet to participate. Or you may refer this Tutorial ( www.learnosm.org/en/beginner/introduction/ ) if you need any assistance.

 2) Facebook Safety check: Right after the earthquake hit Nepal, Facebook activated its very unique function known as “Safety check”. It helps in notifying people about their friends safety status. This check can be checked by yourself or you can also check someone who you know is safe. So this can also help for easier communication.

 3) Google Person Finder: Google also deployed its special search engine named google person finder ( www.google.org/personfinder/2015-nepal-earthquake) that helps in finding people who are missing in Earthquake in Nepal. But in order to make it complete functional, people need to update their status in its database so that anyone who search you can find you easily. This service is currently available via mobile phone too. You can post the status of people who you know are safe as well as also file a missing person. This is also very effective way of finding people’s status from around the globe. Anyone can volunteer in this to update the database of safe and missing peoples. In Nepal: text “Search ” to 6040 In India: text”Search ” to +91-9773300000 In USA: text”Search ” to +1-650-800-3978  

4) Data Analysis: Some of you are also eager of stats about earthquake. So to facilitate these queries Humanitarian Digital Exchange ( www.data.hdx.rwlabs.org/group/nepal earthquake) platform can be useful. It was launched by UN Office for the coordination of Human Affair with the goal of enabling humanitarian agencies to upload, analyse, and share data that can sharpen their ability to target relief efforts. Beyond that you can also analyse the data for extracting some useful informations and share those so that it can lead to easier rescues and relief efforts. 

 5) Tracing Service: You can use the tracing service ( www.familylinks.icrc.org/nepal-earthquake/en/pages/home.aspx ) deployed by ICRC (International Committee of Red Cross). It allows anyone to search for missing relatives or to report that they are alive.  

6) Social Networking: In current days social networking has been the most popular trend among the people of all ages. So if you have some data or information about people who are in need of relief or may be some health or some other issues, you can use your own social network to spread the necessary information so that it can be seen by those who are trying to serve the specific need. You can help by posting those things in pages who are working in the relief efforts. 

 7) Last but not the least you can uplift the people’s confidence and courage by providing them some good form of informative as well as useful medias like videos and pictures. Please note that We Nepalese have always help up our heads in pride so please don’t post anything that can be shameful you and country. 

Instead of being idle, do whatever is possible for victims. Just boosting their confidence is also worth more valuable than just being idle. 

 We had made such great History and we have never learnt to surrender to problems instead we will bounce back.

 Stay calm Nepal, one day again we will RISE up. 

 May God bless Nepal.

(This post is posted by mobile device so links are not properly. please copy the links in bracket and open it in ur browser. Whenever I get chance to get online via PC, I will fix it)