The central city of Da Nang and Facebook on July 31 kicked off a partnership programme on enhancing disaster response and digital capacity, the first of its kind sealed between Facebook and a Vietnamese locality.

The partnership includes training activities to boost capacity of local public personnel in using the social network as a fast and effective communications channel with each other and with residents. Facebook also introduced a data for community programme that includes population density and disaster maps. Vietnamese agencies can use the density map when it comes to planning for disaster response. Meanwhile, the disaster map is able to provide near-real-time insights into affected people’s electricity accessibility, evacuation status, and demand for necessities and services, among others, to help humanitarian organisations coordinate their work during disasters.-VNA