It’s about the info, not the outlet

As Hurricane Sandy devastated the eastern seaboard, news outlets, networks, and Twitter flooded the airwaves with information. For those able to turn to the Internet for help, locating correct information in an instantly digestible format wasn’t an easy as it should have been.

While many news outlets did a solid job providing coverage, it was a map produced by Google that stood out as the most comprehensive display of the data available about the storm and its recovery. Google’s Superstorm Sandy map and its NYC version aggregated information about weather conditions, shelters, evacuation zones, and transportation. The maps were built by Google’s Crisis Response Team which is a project of , Google’s philanthropic arm. The Crisis Response Team has been responding to natural disasters since 2005, when members worked on a similar project for Hurricane Katrina. Google’s map is effective because it pulls the right data in quickly and displays it clearly. The layout is clear and simply formatted; users can select various layers of information they want displayed. For example, they can filter out all the other layers except for shelters. They can then add on the traffic update layer to see the fastest and safest route to their closest shelter.