Twitter to Help Indonesians Deal with Flood

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The largest microblogging service provider, Twitter Inc., will have its hand on one of Indonesia’s infrastructure support project. Dickson Seow, Twitter's Chief of Corporate Communications for Asia Pacific Region, said that the company is currently developing a data collecting system that can help prevent flood disasters in Jakarta. "This is our joint project together with the Wollongong University in Australia," he said last week.

Seow said that the system will be able to assist the government and the people to predict areas that are going to be flooded. The service will be provided in the form of cellular phone or computer application that will assist rescue teams to send aid to flood victims. The system is said to utilize tweets from Twitter users integrated with a digital map.

Seow said that people will only have to tweet information related to which areas are flooded, followed by a hashtag #petajakarta.

In addition to the Wollongong University, Twitter may also work with other parties for the project. Seow said that Twitter will open a branch office in Jakarta within the next three to six months.

SAID MAHMUD