Chennai floods: Google spreadsheet comes to city's rescue

CHENNAI: Among the most-shared updates on the torrential rains and subsequent impact in Chennai on Twitter is a Google spreadsheet document that lists the city's Good Samaritans who have opened their doors for the stranded.

It is a technology-enabled attempt to crowdsource information about relief on the internet.

The document is also sounding board for anyone with an internet connection and in need of a roof and basic supplies. As of now, it lists homes in 217 locations in Chennai, from Parry's to Perungudi, that can take in people. It is editable up 50 concurrent additions. The curator has put in a word of advise to people accessing the document to not linger so new additions get on board quickly.

"It started as a suggestion from a friend," says Sowmya Rao, who had developed the idea to crowdsource information. With the help of friends including Shrinivas SG, who is building mobile internet products at Airtel India, Rao kicked off a sharing blitzkrieg on social media, especially Twitter.

Another similar effort started by two engineering students has seen close to 100 entries by people who are willing to open their doors and offer assistance for the stranded. SaveChennai, a thread started by third year computer science students Mohammed Ishak and Harikrishnan PV on their one-month-old website Klipher.com, has so far received 10,000 hits, over 1000 shares on facebook pages and are currently being used by 120 people.

“As of now people who can afford accommodation can come to the site and add details. We thought that providing people with details of assistance in this manner would be very helpful as we felt creating a thread would be more efficient than a Google doc,” said Ishak, one of the developers.

The city showed its spirit through more crowdsourced efforts like chennairains.org, a comprehensive resource centre that gives useful contact details and details on people and places offering shelter and food. The site which also gives options to seek rescue via a rescue form as well as to offer volunteership has so far received 295 entries from people making available their shelters.

Meanwhile Arun Ganesh and Aruna Shanakaranarayanan, two techies based out of Bangalore, attempted a unique initiative to map the inundated areas of Chennai. Floodmap Chennai, an open-sourced project calls out to people to help planners and city-authorities understand the flooding problem by contributing to the map.

“My friend and I had this idea of creating a useful tool feeling that details provided on tv channels and by corporation on the flooded areas where not adequate enough,” said Ganesh. The map which saw 1200 reports of flooding on the first day itself has so far mapped well over 2000 streets that are flooded and are finding 300 active users every minute.

On top of such collective efforts individuals were seen offering food, shelter and even phone recharges via their facebook profiles and twitter handles. While several religious and educational institutions opened their doors to the stranded, malls and multiplexes too followed suit. Startups like Stayzilla and Zoomcar tried staying relevant by providing helpline numbers and offering to pickup the stranded.

While Chennai saw its Thalaivar Rajinikanth announcing Rs 10lakh for flood relief efforts, other prominent faces like actor Sidharth stepped out for rescue operations frequently updating developments via his twitter handle.