Last week, during the floods in Germany and Austria, zooming on the map, flood symbols and information on the left-side bar appeared when clicking on the symbols for the affected area. I saw the same in the US with the massive fires in California and Oregon a few days ago. Ditto for the wild fires in Australia last year.
But in the last couple of days with the massive wildfires sweeping through western Sardinia around Cuglieri (OR), I did not see any of that, which could have been very useful to local people and many tourists who did not know where to go or what to do (as reported here) as the operations took plenty of resources even from neighbour EU countries.
Also it’s worth noting there’s no real-time governmental map in Italy for fire and flood warnings and the only one is provided by the EFFIS-Copernicus team based on satellite images of live fires and burnt areas.
Is there a way for us Local Guides to inform the Maps team to place these symbols on the map when such an event occur (like for Waze)? Or is just the local/government Civil Protection team that can communicate to the Maps team? Or is just the Maps team that independently take the information from sources and place on the map if they feel it relevant?
I think this is pretty important issue as the provision of live info with Maps, in addition to official governmental sources, could help save lives and tell people (especially tourists not familiar with the area) what to do during a natural hazard, and us Local Guides could perhaps be able to do our bit by flagging sources of info, data etc to the Maps team for them to consider displaying on the map.
I’m tagging @ErmesT and @JanVanHaver as the only two I know in this forum and who might provide some help/consider discussing it with the Maps team.
Google Maps has a program enabling local and regional partners to upload their data directly and automatically. Please learn more here: Google Maps Content Providers
Examples include municipalities and public transport providers.
It might be relevant that you are familiar with this program and the works of it first.
Crisis Response has been designed a few years ago to inform about crisis (like the wildfires in Sardinia) in Google maps
As you can see, they partner with “with global, national, and local organizations to provide trusted, actionable information in critical moments”
I have requested to Improving Users interaction on Crisis Map long time ago, but actually we can only give feedback on road closures, if a crisis status is highlighted in an area.
Here below a couple of link from the announcement here in Connect
I too believe a step forward would be extremely useful in this.
Local Guides (perhaps those with a high level reached or those with a training gained with the Google Crisis Response and the Google Earth Outreach team) could really play an important part in:
providing reliable, up-to-date information during a flood, a wild fire or an earthquake when resources from governmental and especially local civil protection agencies are stretched out to the max during a major crisis (like during the fires in Sardinia);
spreading the word to these local civil protection agencies, who are sometimes - I too was until I saw your post - unaware of the excellent tools and opportunities (say the Android ELS or the Google Earth Outreach programme) to enhance their services and/or to partner with Google Crisis Response thanks to its partnership programme;
I will pass on the above information to the relevant agencies in my region which I think could greatly benefit from using these services offered by Google.
Just for fun: My application post for Connect Live 2018 was about Mapping in Emergency area, and Crisis Response was announced a month later.
Unfortunately in Italy Public agencies are not paying too much attention to resources that are free and ready to use, like ARPA for meteorological issues.
Raising a flag doesn’t take too much time, as they do this locally in any case, but it can be extremely helpful. We spent a lot of time in 2016 just to reach the area of the earthquake in Umbria and Marche, as the information about the road closure were not released in Maps.
Again, we have the resources, we must find a way to educate our public institution to use them. I agree that a good group of active volunteers can help a lot in this, but as we are volunteers we may give up in a critical situation, while an “official” cooperation cannot, as they are paid to do their job