DHAKA: India Andhra Pradesh government's move to leverage the power of technology and involve citizens in disaster management works post 'Hudhud' devastation seems to be yielding dividends as scores of people have uploaded pictures of affected areas from their smartphones.

The Indian government has released some of the pictures it had received directly from the public, reports the India Times.

They have been downloaded from AP Disaster Management Facebook page, Twitter pages of APgovt and APCMO and some of the officers' personal account handles, the report added.

These pictures have been collected for AP government's crowdsourcing project to send them to National Remote Sensing Centre here for geo-tagging locations and putting them on the satellite map to directly identify them, officials said.

"A lot of people wanted to reach out to AP Government but couldn't do so due to snapping and disruption of telecommunications and power lines," an official said.

The government is using space technology with the help of ISRO and NRSC (National Remote Sensing Centre) in disaster management.

The government, with the help of NRSC, has also launched an Android app for a crowdsourcing project where people can upload photos from their smartphones.

Chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has directed NRSC to use GIS, GPS and remote sensing technologies to spot the damage and put them on the satellite through geo-tagging.

The administration has created a Facebook page called AP Disaster Management. It has created #HudhudAP to reach out to people and get information from them on popular social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

They said “Take pics of road bridges, reservoirs, tanks damage, power facilities damage, cellphone towers, railway lines, buildings with #HudhudAP.”

It is also extensively using WhatsApp, an instant messaging service for smartphones and selected feature phones, the officials added.

BDST: 0843 HRS, OCT 15, 2014