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August 17, 2006
Google Earth Helps Indian Citizens Trapped by Flood Waters
This is an interesting application of Google Earth: In Gujarat last week, some serious flooding left many people stranded. The city of Surat, India 
was particularly hard hit and the Indian Air Force needed to conduct some air-drops of desperately needed supplies to stranded citizens. Two local men, a Arvind Patel and Pravin Patel, used Google Earth to help suggest critical locations to make the drops greatly improving the relief efforts. The two men also convinced municipal authorities and airport officials to use Google Earth in their aid coordination. Here's a story from Ahmedabad Newsline.
According to another clipping from an Ahmedabad newspaper:
If [officials] could have struck upon this idea before, it would have helped many more people as carpet air-dropping of aid leads to lots of wastage. Using this tool, it was easy to identify buildings and other landmarks as [the locals] know the city like the back of their hands.
What an amazing application of Google Earth! Thanks to Jonathan who E-mailed me this story which came from worldchanging.com.
Posted by FrankTaylor at August 17, 2006 03:39 PM
Comments
Posted by: TheLedge at August 18, 2006 07:24 AM
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This is indeed an excellent example of the usefulness of this application.
I, for one, would like to congratulate Arvind Patel and Pravin Patel for their quick thinking, that helped to provide assistance to our friends in Surat, India.
TheLedge, GEC Moderator.