According to Ryan Falor, crisis response product manager for Google, survivors turned to the Internet following a disaster and a substantial portion of local search traffic was related to the disaster. For example, Hurricane Katrina survivors searched for recovery resources, Haitian earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince tried to reach out to family and friends, and survivors of the March 2011 earthquake in Japan inquired about power outages and helped survivors find their friends and family. In addition, survivors of the tornado in Joplin, Mo., used the Internet to search for recovery resources.
Even as 90 percent of New Orleans evacuated following Hurricane Katrina, Falor’s analysis found that the volume of search traffic was still at 20 percent of pre-hurricane levels. Not surprisingly, search queries for resource providers including FEMA and the Red Cross grew the fastest.
Although the May 2011 tornado in Joplin destroyed 25 percent of the town, search traffic was at nearly 60 percent pre-tornado levels and returned to normal the next day. Key words that saw the greatest increase in search traffic immediately following the disaster included: disaster relief, FEMA, the American Red Cross and the National Weather Service.
Internet traffic in Japan was largely unaffected by the March 2011 quake, according to Renesys, a company that monitors Internet connectivity. Connections were still available to support emergency responders’ communications. “Despite terrible fires, floods and power outages, traffic from Japanese clients just keeps going,” James Cowie, Renesys co-founder and chief technology officer, wrote in a blog post. “It's quite a remarkable plot.”
Following the earthquake, 620,000 records were posted in Google Person Finder, which helps people find missing friends and family in the aftermath of disasters, according to Falor. Terms related to power outages topped the list of most searched in the country.
Following the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010, the local words for “earthquake” were the most searched terms. Both earthquakes reportedly stopped search traffic for a short time before recovering. In Chile, search traffic returned to normal volume within four days. In Haiti, Falor found that search volume took a few months to return to pre-earthquake levels despite the rerouting of Internet traffic through a microwave link in the Dominican Republic.
This analysis shows that contrary to what one might expect, the Internet has proven to be a resilient resource, providing information on recovery assistance as well as the condition of friends and family following a disaster.
