Yesterday we reported how Google was playing its part in the Hurricane Sandy relief effort, with the launch of an interactive crisis map displaying pertinent information such as the locations of evacuation centers and the likely path of the storm.

But Google wasn’t the only big data company keen to show off its expertise in times of disaster, as a whole host of smaller firms took the opportunity to showcase similarly useful tools that can assist individuals and businesses during times of chaos. Let’s take a look at some of them:

Datum Companies

We’re a little suspicious of Datum Companies, who were fortunate (or opportunistic?) enough to launch their disaster-prediction application just last Friday. But coincidence or not, their Eurus software certainly looks the part and could well prove to be indispensable for insurers that are said to be facing a bill in the region of $10 – $20 billion in the wake of Sandy.

Eurus is a cloud-based platform which crunches tons of data and puts it through a complex algorithm, in order to predict the likely losses that will occur from natural disasters. The software is based on the Cassandra NoSQL database, and collects and stores billions of data points that it uses to run its prediction models.

SiSense

Tel Aviv-based business intelligence startup SiSense was another company that gleefully took advantage of Sandy. They claim that their in-memory data analysis platform Prism is one of the fastest in the world, and to underline this point, it built the following interactive dashboard in less than one hour, using publically available data from Data.gov.

SiSense is probably too late to help the likes of Datagram this time around, but the next time that the storage company is looking to build a new data server, no doubt it’ll be looking for a location less exposed to flood risks, and that’s exactly where SiSense can help.

Palantir

Palantir, a relatively unknown startup based in Palo Alto, California, seems to prefer staying off the radar. Yet that didn’t stop disaster response agency Direct Relief from lauding its merits in a press release it issued just yesterday:

“Working with analytical and data visualization tools from technology partner, Palantir, Direct Relief is able to pinpoint clinic partners located in socially vulnerable areas and in flood risk zones near Hurricane Sandy’s path. Palantir’s tools allow Direct Relief to pull together massive amounts of information sources into a common framework to better understand, visualize, plan, and manage for complex emergencies in near real-time.”

“Offers of supplies were sent to more than 300 partners in the path of the storm and along evacuation routes.”