Hurricane Sandy and open data | Open Knowledge Foundation Blog

"It is not an immediately obvious partnership, and yet open data and crisis response go together incredibly well. As storms have lashed the East coast of the US in recent days, causing tragic loss of life and enormous financial damage, many of the tools which have helped citizens to track its path and stay safe have been built on the back of open government data. Just as with the Open Street Map community’s response in the Haiti disaster, we find that with open data at their fingertips, civic hackers and developers are able to build useful tools in an emergency with a speed that far outstrips what centralised government agencies are able to produce. Check out the Google Crisis Map of Hurricane Sandy, which predicts the future of the storm in real time, including power outages; or the New York Times’s evacuation map. Or if you’re a coder wanting to work with others in the tech community, check out HurricaneHackers who are working on projects and resources for Sandy. Alex Howard is tracking the datastorm here..."