That's where Patrick Meier comes in.

Meier harnesses the information-gathering power of social media to improve the speed and effectiveness of relief efforts. He's using a relatively new set of "crisis mapping" tools to assist humanitarian work during the ongoing disaster of Super Typhoon Haiyan (also called Yolanda) in the Philippines. (See "What's a typhoon?")

Meier is director of social innovation at the Qatar Foundation's Computing Research Institute in Qatar. He develops tools, like the just launched website MicroMappers, that quickly sort through online data, from tweets to uploaded photos, and then display the information on satellite maps.

Aid agencies can view the maps, which change in real time based on data coming in, and then use that information