- Title
- 2010 HAITI EARTHQUAKE Final Report
- License
- Public Domain (PD)
-
+ Works in the public domain may be used freely without the permission of the former copyright owner.
+ For more info see http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html. - Abstract
- This report provides a detailed account of how technology, inspiration and collaboration were used to quickly assess the amount of damage caused by the January 12, 2010 Haiti earthquake. In less than a minute, this event leveled approximately 20 percent of the buildings in greater Port-au-Prince; killed close to a quarter of a million people; injured as many; and left over a million individuals homeless. While not considered a great earthquake (from seismological standards), this event will rank as one of the deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century. This event will also be known as one of the first events where technology (especially high-resolution imagery) was embraced in a real operational sense. Almost from the very onset of the disaster, high- resolution satellite imagery was available to provide the first glimpse of the devastation caused by this earthquake. Days later, very-high resolution aerial imagery was available to provide even more detail on the damage caused in this event. Together, these valuable datasets allowed a small army of remote sensing experts to provide one of the more accurate assessments of building damage in the last decade. Furthermore, this information was shared with Haitian government officials in relatively short time – within two months of the earthquake – in the form of a Building Damage Assessment Report in support of the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) and Recovery Framework. This report documents the analyses completed by the ImageCat team in support of the World Bank’s initial response to the disaster. The report describes the various phases completed by the project team, including a Phase 1 damage assessment using satellite imagery and a Phase 2 assessment using very- high resolution aerial photos. We discuss the World Bank-ImageCat-Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) remote sensing mission to collect very high resolution aerial imagery over greater Port-au-Prince (PaP) which played a central role for the Phase 2 damage analysis. In addition, participation in the PDNA damage assessment with the United Nation’s UNITAR/UNOSAT unit and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) is also discussed. Furthermore, in order to improve the damage assessment process, the ImageCat team also participated in a series of post-PDNA meetings where the focus was on developing a set of Standard Operation Procedures (SOP) for damage assessment. Reference to this last effort is made in this document; however, the details of the SOP are contained in a separate report that will be published by the three main organizations, i.e., the World Bank, UN/UNOSAT and EC/JRC.
- Publication Date
- Aug. 1, 2010, 2:02 p.m.
- Category
- Geoscientific Information
- information pertaining to earth sciences. Examples: geophysical features and processes, geology, minerals, sciences dealing with the composition, structure and origin of the earth s rocks, risks of earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides, gravity information, soils, permafrost, hydrogeology, erosion
- Regions
- Haiti
- Responsible
- andy
- Language
- English
- Supplemental Information
- No information provided
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