How You Can Help Crowdsource Typhoon Yolanda Response

Typhoon Yolanda hit the Philippines this past Friday as one of the largest and most powerful storms ever recorded on earth. Many initiatives are under way to support response efforts. However, if you would like to support response efforts with your time and energy rather than donating, MicroMappers, at the request of the United Nations Office of Humanitarian Assistance (UN OCHA), has stood up two applications to help quickly identify (“tag”) information from tweets and images relevant to disaster responders.

TweetClicker and ImageClicker are both simple to use “microtasking” applications to verify tweets and images gathered from social media. The goal is to leverage the crowd to help sift through the massive amounts of data collected. Each application requires no technical expertise and can be used on your computer or mobile device. The application runs you through a simple tutorial before beginning. Each message takes about three seconds to review and will get reviewed by two other people, so your selections will be validated by others. As of 9 a.m. EST on Nov. 13, no more tweets and images are being added to the applications but the sifting effort is ongoing, and you can view results on the crisis map.

The results of this effort are being displayed on a live crisis map supported by the StandbyTaskForce and GISCorps, which are both members of the Digital Humanitarian Network. Each of these groups is a network of people and organizations with missions to support the formal and informal response.

In the response to Hurricane Yolanda/Haiyan, they are digitally skilled volunteers acting as force multipliers. Conceptually, they are similar to the American Red Cross’ Digital Operations Center that leverages digital volunteers to support response efforts.

Leading this effort is MicroMappers. The initiative (loosely defined) is a partnership between QRCI, CrowdCrafting and UN OCHA, and is led by a number of industry technologists including Patrick Meier, Ji Lucas, Luis, Daniel, Ariba Jahan, Christine Jackson, and Daniel Lombrana Gonzalez.

For more background and continuous updates on Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan response efforts using TweetClicker and ImageClicker, check out this blog post.


Brandon Greenberg, MPA, CEM, is a Ph.D. student at George Washington University studying the intersection of technology and disaster management. He has more than 10 years of experience in emergency response and disaster management, and is the founder of DisasterNet where he blogs regularly and advises organizations and communities on the synergies between resilience, innovation and technology.