A humanitarian web 2.0 initiative supported by Google: MISSING - A global search engine for missing people after natural disasters

Object : One year after having won the call for proposal “Web innovant”, initiated by the French Secretariat of State to Digital Economy, the Red Helmets Foundation, in partnership with Bearstech and European Consulting Services, launches the ALPHA version of MISSING, the global search engine for missing people.

The Launching of MISSING, will be a new step in the field of search for missing people. This search engine is organized around a Web participative platform which optimize the coordination during the search of missing people. Developed in the six officials languages of the United Nations, MISSING gives the following functionality :

Developed in the six languages of the United Nations, MISSING offers the following functionality:

* Creation of a file dedicated to the missing person with all the information necessary to the search (photography, civil status, last known address of the missing person, distinguishing marks...)

* Search for a missing person thanks to the dedicated search engine

* Identification of victims thanks to the face book

* Possibility to leave testimonies, to post photos, videos, to geolocalise the victim, to aggregate feeds related to the disappearance...

* Aggregation of all information related to the disappearance and stemming from any social network in the world.

For Nicole Guedj, former Minister and actual President of the Red Helmets Foundation: “Humanitarian action has to be coordinated in order to facilitate the rescue of victims during the first and decisive hours after a natural catastrophe. This is why I am advocating for the creation of Red Helmets, who would work under the umbrella of the UN. Their role would be to organize and coordinate the intervention of all the rescue teams sent, in emergency, to the crisis spot. Missing will be a must-have for these Red Helmets but also for all ground actors who have the greatest difficulties to respond demands of families who have lost a relative.”

MISSING is supported by Google, which kindly offers its technical competences and its communication power to ensure that as much people as possible are informed of victims’ disappearances after a natural disaster. This first version of MISSING will be experimented and is already ready to be operated in case of natural disasters.

Source: www.casques-rouges.org