As thousands from the geospatial community descend on St. Louis for the annual GEOINT conference, last Friday’s destructive EF-3 tornado offers an up-close example of the power of this technology.
Early Saturday, Mayor Cara Spencer estimated 5,000 buildings had been in the tornado’s direct path and by Sunday estimated damage costs soared above $1 billion.
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Geospatial technology is an important part of coming up with those estimates quickly, says Dan Haag, St. Louis region manager with Esri, which provides geographic information systems to clients, including the city of St. Louis. After a severe weather event like what happened last Friday, Haag says his company will reach out to assist with disaster response and recovery.
“We can see in imagery what areas have been impacted, how many structures, how severe, what is the total cost assessment,” he says. “We can help pull all of that information together and provide it at a glance through something like a dashboard.”
That helps cities prioritize which areas need the most immediate support. Haag says it’s important to enable cities like St. Louis to move more quickly in responding to a disaster like Friday’s. Other agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, use Esri products, making it easier to share data after a disaster, he adds.
“We can coordinate, share that information very quickly and effectively,” Haag says. “We’re not trying to code new applications on the fly.”
Mapping tools can be crucial for not just municipalities, but also homeowners affected by the weather, says Andy Dearing, executive vice president at the Chesterfield-based geospatial company Surdex. He sent up one of the company’s planes on Saturday to survey and capture images of the immediate damage and then released the resulting before-and-after map for free.
That imagery gives the power back to citizens when they’re dealing with claims adjusters, Dearing says. That’s because many require visual proof of damage to property, which can be impossible to capture if a building has already been cleaned up.
“When you talk about post-disaster information, you see that, obviously, timing is very important,” he says. “Being able to have that evidence right there, a picture really is worth a thousand words, or is worth thousands and thousands of dollars being able to help support the rebuild process.”
The flight on Saturday that made the map possible likely cost Surdex more than $10,000, but Dearing says it was worth it to provide information to the greater community.
“We want to make sure that we’re good partners,” he says. “We have skills, capabilities, [and] 110 employees that are here. How can we give back?”
Dearing adds Surdex will survey the area again in a couple months and likely provide that imagery to local government officials to help them see what recovery has occurred and what still needs to happen.
St. Louis aims to become a geospatial hub, with hopes that the National Geospatial Agency’s new headquarters in north St. Louis will spur ancillary entrepreneurship as its applications become increasingly relevant and applicable to sectors outside of defense.
More long-term, geospatial information can help municipalities make better decisions about where and how to build, says Jessi Dick, head of marketing in North America for Airbus’ space digital division. Climate scientists can study images over time to discern how to adapt to weather disasters, like wildfires or massive flooding events.
“Imagery is used for a lot of urban planning and even rural planning,” she says. “Anywhere building is happening or infrastructure is being put in place, it is used to learn from the past and prepare for the future.”
