Google Person Finder

In the midst of the Japanese Tsunami crisis there are still thousands unaccounted for. There is ground support, government crisis management and NGOs at work but unexpectedly – there is also Google. With the Japan Person Finder.

Google Person Finder was launched in response to the Haiti earthquake last year. Looking to assist those affected, Google launched the online interface to help the public connect with the ones they’ve lost through a search engine geared specifically for this purpose.

A project from the Google Crisis Response division of Google.org. The division analyses the scale of impact of a disaster and then determines which of its tools would be the most useful for responding to the given situation.

An open source project, Google Person Finder loads as a simple landing page with two options ‘I am looking for someone’ or ‘I have information about someone’, Google is effectively creating a database of those lost and found in the midst of the disaster. Pooling multiple registries of missing and found persons to serve as a central search engine for missing persons.

The tools crafted over the Google years now implemented in an initiative that does what Google does best, bringing it all together.

Using an open API Google Person Finder can also be embedded on third party websites and is available in multiple languages.