About Safety Maps
Safety-Maps is an online application you can use to make and share maps of safe places to meet in the event of a disaster or other emergency. You can share these maps with friends, or print them out in a variety of convenient sizes.
All Safety Maps provide a space for you to include a personal message to the map’s recipients.
What’s the point?
There can be very little worse than being separated from those you care about most at a time of disaster. The energy you may need to survive will be consumed by the gnawing anxiety you will no doubt feel for them. What’s worse, coordinating via the conventional channels may be out of the question at such a moment: phone, text, and email networks may all be down.
Understanding this ahead of time, wouldn’t it be a step in the right direction if you were able to agree on a meeting place now — somewhere you all knew well, thought of as safe (or at least safer), and found easy to get to? And wouldn’t it be even better if you could print out a map of this place, to post in a prominent location or to keep with you at all times?
Finally, wouldn’t it be wonderful if, in addition to its other provisions, that map had space for a personal note, something that let you feel the presence of someone who cares about you at what might be a very difficult moment?
This is the challenge we set before ourselves in designing Safety Maps. We would love to hear your thoughts as to the kinds of things you use it for, and whether you think we’ve succeeded.
What kinds of emergencies can I use Safety Maps for?
San Franciscans and Tokyoites probably think primarily of earthquakes, New Yorkers have more experience with blackouts, and people from New Orleans are naturally concerned with flooding. We designed Safety Maps to be agnostic as to the kind of situation you use it for — it doesn’t even necessarily have to be a disaster.
You can also print and share different maps for differing disaster scenarios: one meeting place for a fire, another for a flood, and so on. We’ve left space for you to give each unique map an appropriate and prominent title.
What is a “safe place”?
Wherever you think you, your friends and loved ones will be able to gather, be protected from further danger, and be easily visible to one another. We leave the definition of “safety” entirely up to you, although you can also see places other users nearby have chosen for these same qualities.
We also strongly recommend checking with your local disaster preparedness office to confirm that the place you’ve chosen makes sense.
About Do projects.
Do projects is an undisciplinary design collective based in New York City.
More information about Do and our other activities are available on our site, doprojects.org.
Disclaimer
Safety Maps, safety-maps.org and Do projects do not intend you to use this site in isolation, do not make any warranty of the fitness or suitability of any geographical location for any purpose whatsoever and can accept no accountability for consequences arising from your use of the site. It is provided free and as a service to the public. Your use of Safety Maps and the services made available therein constitutes your acknowledgment of and consent to these provisions.