Google (GOOG), which helped provide maps and people-finder tools after the earthquake in Haiti, has set up a site dedicated to the oil spill that combines data from Louisiana’s government as well as NASA and state non-profit organizations to provide a map of the oil slick and its effects.

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And so yesterday the Federal Communications Commission announced plans to develop an emergency-alert system that would broadcast SMS messages to cellphones and other mobile devices wherever a crisis occurs. The Commercial Mobile Alert System, as it’s been dubbed, will deliver three different types of text alerts to mobile phone subscribers: presidential alerts concerning terrorist attacks and whatnot; imminent threat alerts warning of natural disasters; and Amber Alert child abduction warnings.

Sounds like a nice comprehensive program. Too bad you won’t see it for another two years, at least. Unless you happen to live in a region like Contra Costa County in Northern California, where a tech-savvy local government is already hard at work on its own geographically targeted emergency alert system.