The Japanese are the third biggest users of Twitter in the world, and the network became a crucial communication method and information source, typically faster and more effective than mainstream media.
Several similar projects are being developed, including those through the Digital Humanitarian Network and the Standby Taskforce - organisations that mobilise volunteers with expertise in monitoring social media, translating messages to and from local dialects, and creating crisis maps around disasters.
Kim Scriven is the manager of the Humanitarian Innovation Fund, a government-backed agency set up in 2011 that supports innovative research in humanitarian aid.
He says the trying to harvest and filter the vast amounts of data generated by a disaster or conflict is "the big nut that people are trying to crack", with the real challenge being to turn all of that data into information that humanitarian agencies can actually act on.
Technology sea-change
"There are lots of people working on it, but in my view that hasn't happened yet," he says.
Alongside the smaller start-ups typically supported by Mr Scriven's fund, the bigger technology players are beginning to show more interest in humanitarian applications for their technology.
Google recently unveiled its drone programme, which it suggests could be used to airdrop aid into disaster zones.
Last year, the search giant unveiled Project Loon - a plan to deliver internet connections to hard-to-reach places through a network of high-altitude balloons.
Both are in the early stages of development. But aid workers say we are seeing a sea-change in the role of technology in humanitarian relief, and how it can empower those affected by the disaster they find themselves in.
"[Disaster relief] is no longer about just dropping items on people and leaving them to it," says the Red Cross's Sharon Reader.
"There has been a huge shift in the aid world in seeing people who are affected by a crisis not as victims but as people who have the capacity to look after themselves."
Article provided by BBC News