Facebook launched Safety Check in 2014. In the time after a crisis or natural disaster, Facebook activates Safety Check for the surrounding area. People in the affected region are given alerts and can mark themselves as safe. This information is then conveyed to loved ones, stopping others worrying.
Safety Check makes it easy to work out who’s safe in the wake of a disaster. However, it doesn’t help people who want to assist with the relief effort, despite linking users who are in the affected area. That changes today with the launch of a new feature called Community Help.
Community Help lets people find and contribute assistance in the hours after a crisis. Users can directly message each other to request and provide support, making it simpler to find people and deliver resources.
Posts in Safety Check can be sorted by category and location. People who need help can filter posts to show only people offering it. For their part, users who have aid to contribute can look for the people who need it most. The feature aims to let people in the area coordinate their own relief work if official help hasn’t reached the region.
Facebook said Community Help has been developed in response to feedback from its community. Previously, people have used Facebook Groups to offer and accept assistance while Safety Check is active. By bringing help features directly into Safety Check, Facebook has created a single page to visit when disaster strikes.
Humanitarian relief experts, researchers and organisations have helped Facebook to develop Community Help. It’s already been tested to make sure it serves users reliably when working during an actual disaster.
Safety Check has now evolved considerably since its initial 2014 launch. The project was started by Facebook’s team in Japan after the 2011 tsunami that affected 400,000 people. It was picked up by the rest of Facebook and transformed into the automated system used today.
While now more efficient, the automation hasn’t been entirely problem-free. Safety Check has raised a few false alarms since being allowed to trigger alerts itself. In December, it warned people in Bangkok, Thailand, that the entire city was at risk after detecting a non-existent explosion. The feature was triggered by a minor media report about a man who delivered firecrackers to a government building.
Initially, Community Help will only be enabled for natural and accidental events. It’s limited to disasters in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Saudi Arabia during its launch period but will expand further in the coming months. Facebook said it will continue to work on the tool and add additional incident types as it learns more about how Safety Check is used.
