Remote Sensing and Field Reconnaissance for Rapid Damage Detection in Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

Over the past 5 years, the burgeoning availability and application of remote-sensing technologies integrated with strategically planned field reconnaissance has proven highly effective for resilient post-disaster response, for providing rapid and resourceful information about the location and severity of natural-hazard damage, and for preserving untouched damage scenes for further detailed analysis. Landfall of Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 marked the first opportunity to examine and preserve multi-hazard damage conditions caused by wind, flood, and storm surge via newly available remote-sensing technologies providing unparalleled views of the damage at regional, neighborhood, and per-building levels. Immediately following landfall, MCEER field teams deployed to the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans to perform rapid and widespread assessments of damage at a per-building scale. A subsequent detailed study integrated various remote-sensing platforms with the ground-based survey data to identify the most appropriate roles for these multiple data platforms in rapid understanding of the damages resulting from a hurricane in a multi-tier framework.