online and mobile tools can help stricken travellers

Yesterday's ski tragedy in Verbier has highlighted the ways in which online and mobile tools can be harnessed to help stricken travellers. Tragic events unfolded yesterday as a group of British skiers became separated from two of their party in the Swiss resort of Verbier. The rescue operation took on a global perspective when members of the party - a group of UK technology entrepreneurs - used the micro-blogging site Twitter in trying to locate the missing skiers. Despite the concerted efforts of the online community and the mountain rescue teams, developments which were instantly relayed on Twitter, one of the skiers, co-founder of Dolphin Music Rob Williams died in the incident.

The sad events have highlighted the ways in which online and mobile tools can be harnessed to help travellers in emergency situations. A Twitter update by one of the group, trying to find the mobile number of the second stranded skier, Dolphin Music co-founder Jason Tavaria, was re-tweeted across the site. In the following hours, a combination of GPS, Google Maps and signals returned from his iPhone may well have helped save his life - Tavaria was found alive by mountain rescue.
"On a basic level, the virality of Twitter can be crucial for crowdsourcing during emergencies," says Mike Butcher, editor of TechCrunch UK. "In this instance it helped to spread the net as far as possible - anyone who was awake at the time could do what they could. In other ways, Twitter can be used as a radar; there are mobile applications for the site that can tell you exactly who is twittering within a certain radius of you."