Disaster and Humanitarian Response

In what is being described as the worst drought seen in decades, millions of people throughout East Africa are at risk of starvation. A wide range of organizations are already working to meet the needs of those being affected throughout the region. If you are interested in supporting these local relief efforts consider making a donation to one of the agencies working to serve those in need.

On March 11, 2011 at 14.46 (local time), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck 81 miles (130km) east of Sendai, the capital of Miyagi prefecture (Japan), followed by a 13 foot tsunami. Microsoft activated its disaster response protocol to monitor the situation in Japan and other areas on tsunami warning alert, and offer support as appropriate. A number of steps were taken, including ensuring the safety of our employees and their families and proactively offering customers, partners and local response agencies technical support to help ensure business continuity.

The devastating flooding in Pakistan impacted tens of millions of people and the monsoon rains had disastrous consequences throughout the country. Microsoft activated its disaster response protocol to monitor and respond to the situation in Pakistan and offer support where appropriate. A number of steps were taken, including donations of cash, technical support to lead response organizations, promoting employee giving and volunteering, and assessing where our resources could be most helpful for the impacted region and communities.

Microsoft and its employees around the world contributed over $600,000 in cash toward Pakistan Flood Relief. Microsoft matches its US-based employees' charitable contributions up to $12,000 per employee per year, and in the wake of the flooding in Pakistan, Microsoft offices in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and our Middle East and Africa Region matched employees' donations as well.

Community Support and Donations

The following relief organizations provide support to flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

• American Red Cross
• Edhi Foundation
• International Rescue Committee
• Islamic Relief
• MercyCorps
• NetHope
• UNHCR
• UNICEF
• World Food Program
• World Vision

On February 27, 2010, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the coast of Chile. Microsoft has activated its disaster response protocol to monitor the situation in Chile and offer support as appropriate. A number of steps were taken, including ensuring the safety of our employees and their families, and proactively offering customers, partners, and local response agencies technical support to help ensure business continuity.

Community Support and Donations:

The following relief organizations provided support efforts in Chile:

• American Red Cross
• World Vision
• SOS Children's Villages
• Oxfam

Technology Innovation and Leadership:

In past disaster situations, we have provided various technology solutions and services to help humanitarian organizations respond, including updated imagery and maps of the impacted regions, satellite communications infrastructure for nongovernmental organizations, and applications to meet critical communications needs.

We contributed the following technology solutions and tools to help response efforts in Chile:

• A dedicated CSS technical support line for customers and partners in the impacted area.
• Bing Maps collaborating with satellite imagery provider to rapidly publish before and after imagery.

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck near the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince. Microsoft activated its Disaster Response Team to monitor the situation in Haiti and support response efforts as appropriate. Through Microsoft’s support, nonprofit partner, NetHope, was able to set up an immediate response, with specific focus on establishing temporary telecommunications infrastructure to allow humanitarian agencies to communicate and provide relief to those affected.

Monetary Donations:

Microsoft made an initial commitment of $1.25 million, which included cash and in-kind contributions. In the U.S. alone, more than 5,000 Microsoft employees donated more than $1,000,000 to over 250 organizations providing disaster relief to Haiti. Microsoft has an employee matching program where employee donations are matched each year up to $12,000 per employee; this brings the value of employee donations to Haiti to over $2 million.

The following relief organizations:

• American Red Cross
• NetHope
• Save the Children
• World Vision International
• Care
• MercyCorps
• Unicef

Technology Innovation and Support:

Microsoft contributed to the development of the following technology solutions and tools that helped response efforts for the people of Haiti:

• Worked across the Department of Homeland Security to provide IT support and subject matter expertise to enable them to fulfill the extensive requirements of their mission in Haiti.
• Collaborated with satellite imagery provider, DigitalGlobe, to rapidly publish current imagery of Haiti captured by the company's WorldView II satellite sensor. Some of the imagery provided by DigitalGlobe came from their other sensor, Quickbird.
• In response to community requests for a machine translation (MT) system, the Microsoft Translator team created an experimental Haitian Creole MT system. While experimental, this is the first SMT system with the kind of scale and performance required to help volunteers and companies bridge the language gap in Haiti. Read more about the Haitian Creole Translator.
• Xbox LIVE team ran an American Red Cross public service announcement (PSA) media campaign to drive donations to the Haiti Relief and Development Fund through awareness and engagement among the LIVE community. The PSA is ran for two weeks and encouraged users to support the Haiti Relief and Development fund by texting, calling and mailing donations to the American Red Cross. Users were also able to download an American Red Cross theme and gamer pictures to show their support for the cause throughout the Xbox LIVE community.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, Microsoft used MSN.com and Microsoft.com to raise public awareness and support for nonprofit organizations involved in the relief efforts. Many local Microsoft employees responded by volunteering their time and expertise at Internet access stations to help families access FEMA applications and register with the Red Cross “Safe and Well” site. At satellite relief locations throughout the area, Microsoft employees helped members of their community by serving meals for the Salvation Army. Employees throughout the U.S. also made donations to relief organizations, which were matched by Microsoft.

Within hours of the May 2008 earthquake in the Chan’s Sichuan Province, Microsoft began working on relief and recovery efforts. The company and its employees collectively donated US$1.4 million over two years to help rebuild schools and restore education programs in affected communities. When the outpouring of online donations to the Chinese Red Cross Foundation caused its Web site to crash, engineers from the Microsoft China Technology Center helped launch a new site that could process more than 10,000 transactions per day. Microsoft employees in the region also helped provide technical assistance to affected customers and partners, restore local telecommunications service, and post online news reports from areas hit by the quake.

Following the devastating impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Microsoft and its employees committed more than US$11 million in cash contributions and technology to aid in the humanitarian relief efforts.

• More than US$1.7 million was raised by employees, and those donations were matched by Microsoft. Those funds went to national nonprofits, community organizations, and faith-based groups.
• Immediately following the hurricane and flooding, Microsoft provided a corporate donation of US$1 million for relief efforts. This included donations of US$500,000 to the American Red Cross; US$350,000 to Governor’s Funds in Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Alabama; and US$200,000 to America’s Second Harvest.

Several months after the initial crisis, Microsoft made additional investments of US$1 million to organizations involved in rebuilding the region and assisting displaced families.

Microsoft Citizen Safety Architecture (CSA) is a suite of Microsoft and Partner software and services that improve multi-agency operational effectiveness through collaboration and information-sharing. CSA enables governments to reduce costs and more effectively detect and prevent threats to citizen safety, and to prepare for, and respond to, critical incidents.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is a suite of server capabilities that enable people to design customized, Web-based, and security-enhanced interfaces to share critical data without revealing sensitive information. The SharePoint platform helps improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared processes, and making it easier to share information. Organizations such as NetHope are deploying SharePoint portals to improve collaboration and to share information.

Bing Maps is a mapping services platform that enables first responders to visualize complex geospatial information to provide the necessary situational awareness. It provides mapping and imagery so that people can visualize incident and unit locations. Its collaborative and dynamic mapping feature enables responders to integrate weather forecasting data, assess affected areas in real time, track shipments, and pinpoint critical infrastructure.

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a common environment for building, deploying, and running Web services and Web applications—a set of software technologies that makes it easy to connect information, people, systems, and devices. Developers can assemble applications from new and existing code, regardless of platform, language, or object model. The .NET Framework enables developers to build applications of many types, including Web, server, smart client, console, and database.

NetHope is a consortium of many of the world’s leading nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), each with technology capabilities and program operations around the world. NetHope is dedicated to finding and implementing the best use of technological resources available to improve NGO operations and efficiency. NetHope and its member agencies work together as a highly collaborative team—sharing information and communications technology (ICT) knowledge, solving common problems, creating and fostering industry relationships to support public benefit work, and educating consortium members and the broader community of NGOs.

Since 2005, Microsoft has donated more than $44 million to NetHope and its member agencies to support nonprofit technological innovation and programs around humanitarian assistance and development.

• NetHope
• Emergency Capacity Building Project

In 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States, Microsoft worked with the American Red Cross to create the Web site, Katrinasafe.org, now known as Safe and Well. This Web-based tool reunites families and communities that have been affected by disasters. To date, more than 300,000 Katrina evacuees have registered. It has since been used to help victims of the 2005 Pakistan-India earthquake and the 2008 Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Microsoft’s partnership with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) began in 1999 in response to the increasing stream of refugees out of Kosovo. Microsoft mobilized 100 employee volunteers and developed a mobile registration kit that used technology to help 500,000 Kosovo refugees reestablish their identities. This helped reunite families, prove citizenship and property ownership, and provide access to healthcare and other services. Since then, Microsoft volunteers have improved the registration kits for use by UNHCR in many other parts of the world.

Microsoft employee volunteers have worked with the UNHCR team in Uganda, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Rwanda, Guinea, Sudan, and Tanzania. Microsoft also established community technology centers in Kenya and Russia. These centers provide refugees with the opportunity to learn technology skills that can help them succeed as they establish their homes in new countries and regions.

When a cyclone and extensive flooding devastated much of Myanmar in May 2008, Microsoft and 19 of its technology partners rallied to help the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) create a collaboration Web site for aid workers in the region. Built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Virtual Earth (now Bing Maps) technologies, the Humanitarian Information Centre (HIC) Myanmar portal provided response agencies with a single source of reliable information and tools to improve the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

The HIC Myanmar portal featured regularly updated news reports and announcements, links to the most recently uploaded documents, and a calendar of upcoming events. It also provided access to an interactive map center, press materials, weather updates, and collaboration workspaces. The site's interactive mapping features are built on the Microsoft Bing Maps platform and Visual Fusion Suite software from IDV Solutions. Users can view satellite maps of the disaster area, layer weather charts, keep track of relief service locations and supply distributions on the map, and integrate data from elsewhere on the portal or the Internet.

• United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

In addition, Microsoft works with a myriad of technology industry partners to deliver joint innovation solutions in the area of public safety and disaster response.

• Microsoft Citizen Safety Architecture