Kerala Floods - A Model of Rescue and Rehabilitation using Information Technology and Social Media based Crowdsourcing

Kerala, the green state rich with 44 rivers within an area of 38,852 km2  and a high population density of 860/km2 faced its worst flood of the century in mid-August 2018. Rampant monsoon rainfall, landslides and the simultaneous opening of 44 dams out of the 82 in the state caused devastating floods in the coastal state of Kerala. The casualties were around 500 and the total loss of the state was calculated to be around 20,000 crore Rupees.

The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) along with the Indian Army and Indian Navy launched one of its largest rescue mission, evacuating over 10,000 people. The response to the incident was lauded as a unique self-help mission due to the way in which the survivors and victims’ worked together in the relief and rehabilitation process.  The fishermen in the coastal state of Kerala with their sturdy fishing boats played a pivotal role in the rescue mission by shifting a large number of people to safer areas.   The Kerala floods also demonstrated how the usage of Information Technology (IT) and social media backed by public volunteering could build a self-evolving data crowdsourced platform that could aid the rescue and rehabilitation processes. Crowdsourcing is the method of obtaining information or input into a task by making use of the services of a large number of people or devices, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet. Kerala, being one of the states with high digital literacy in India, also has a large smartphone using population.