Facebook to share location data with aid groups working for disaster relief

Providing a helping hand to aid organisations working after natural disasters, Facebook will provide them with location data for users in affected areas, such as where people are marking themselves safe and from where they are fleeing.

In an official blog post, the social networking giant said that it will create "disaster maps" for aid groups like the Red Cross, using anonymized data on its users' locations, movements and status updates. During natural calamities like, earthquakes, or floods, these location density maps will provide rough but recent estimations of where people are distributed, which can be compared to earlier such maps or other measures. This will help agencies to reach target group faster.

Additionally, movement maps will show how people move around cities during natural disasters; and safety check maps to show where people are checking in as safe in relation to the location of a natural disaster.

"Facebook can help response organisations paint a more complete picture of where affected people are located so they can determine where resources -- like food, water and medical supplies -- are needed and where people are out of harm's way," the company said.

The social network also stressed that it was only sharing the information with “trusted organisations that have capacity to act on the data and respect our privacy standards.” They include UNICEF, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the World Food Programme.