High-resolution and LIDAR imaging support to the Haiti earthquake relief effort

David W. Messinger; Jan van Aardt; Don McKeown; May Casterline; Jason Faulring; Nina Raqueño; Bill Basener; Miguel Velez-Reyes

doi:10.1117/12.862090

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13 August 2010 High-resolution and LIDAR imaging support to the Haiti earthquake relief effort

David W. Messinger, Jan van Aardt, Don McKeown, May Casterline, Jason Faulring, Nina Raqueño, Bill Basener, Miguel Velez-Reyes

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Proceedings Volume 7812, Imaging Spectrometry XV; 78120L (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.862090
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

The Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program (WASP) is an imaging system designed, built, and operated by the RIT Center for Imaging Science. The system consists of four cameras: a high resolution color camera and SWIR, MWIR, and LWIR cameras. When flown with our corporate partners, Kucera International, the imaging system is combined with a high-resolution LIDAR. This combination provides a full-spectrum, multimodal data collection platform unique to RIT. Under funding by the World Bank, the WASP system was used to image over 250 sq. mi. in Haiti (approximately 15,000 visible and 45,000 infrared frames) from January 21 - 27, 2010 in support of the earthquake relief efforts. Priorities of collection were the area surrounding Port au Prince, the city of Leogane, several other badly damaged towns, and, at the request of the USGS, a high resolution LIDAR collection over the fault line. The imagery was used in the field by disaster relief workers and by collaborators at the University of Buffalo and ImageCat, Inc. to perform building damage and road network trafficability assessments. Additionally, large area mosaics and semi-automatic processing algorithms were developed for value-added product development. In particular, a methodology was developed to extract the locations of blue tarps (indicative of displaced persons) from the images. All imagery was made available to the public through outlets such as Google Earth, the University of Buffalo, the US Geological Survey, the United Nations, and other sites.

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David W. Messinger, Jan van Aardt, Don McKeown, May Casterline, Jason Faulring, Nina Raqueño, Bill Basener, and Miguel Velez-Reyes "High-resolution and LIDAR imaging support to the Haiti earthquake relief effort", Proc. SPIE 7812, Imaging Spectrometry XV, 78120L (13 August 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.862090

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