Ever since Hurricane Maria desolate Puerto Rico , a grassroots web of unpaid worker has been help the island get back on its feet in an unexpected direction . They ’re usingsatellite images to produce digital maps of building and roadsthat assuagement workers with FEMA and the Red Cross are using to reach those in indigence .
Most voluntary will expend an hour logging a few dozen anatomical structure on the open - origin mathematical function siteHumanitarian Open Street Map , before getting back to their jobs , families , and lives . But Michael , a 57 - yr - previous software engine driver in Ottawa , Canada , has pass scads of hour logging thousands of structures . And thanks to drone footage released by the National Weather Service this workweek , he ’s now able to help even more .
“ As long as there ’s a indigence for it , any time I have a spare moment , I go in and do ten proceedings of contribution , ” Michael , who preferred to be identified on a first name - only basis , told Earther .
Michael first learned about Humanitarian Open Street Map , which has been working with thousands of unpaid worker to supply aid organizations with high quality digital maps of Puerto Rico ’s substructure , through an Earther articleearlier this calendar month .
“ Twenty minute of arc afterwards I had signal up , and within thirty minute I was chromosome mapping buildings , ” he said . “ The first few days , I probably put three to four [ work ] daylight in . ”
In the 37 days since Maria struck the Puerto Rico , Michael says he has mapped or affirm “ likely over a thousand , possibly over two [ thousand ] ” buildings . But he ’s been limited in what he can do by the resolution of the satellite imagery useable on Humanitarian Open Street Map , which was captured before Maria hit . At least , that was the case until earlier this week , when the NWS San Juan officereleased a 10 - minute - tenacious video register drone footageof towns across Puerto Rico that were struck by the hurricane ’s centre wall .
The drone footage is much higher resolution than the planet images available on Humanitarian Open Street Map . It it lays spare many buildings that were previously obscured by trees , or that were invisible due to vestige . Since each town featured in the picture is identified by name , Michael has been able to go back and check exact streets and buildings with the artificial satellite images .
All hebdomad , he ’s been using the droning footage to spot buildings that were missed , or reclassify structures other Volunteer got wrong .
“ The video is very valuable , although for a circumscribed domain , ” Michael said , impart that it takes a lot of sentence to tag down where on the button a specific shot was taken . “ And then you start determining where is this building , are there building in the video that are n’t on the mapping . Sometimes the homes are so torn apart that it ’s not a 1 - 1 mapping . ”
In one example , three houses were mis - mapped as just one , something Michael was able to correct with drone footage that clearly showed the roof layouts . In another , a house was altogether overcloud by treetops in the satellite imagery , but thanks to the NWS video , he was able to estimate its shape and placement .
Dale Kunce , information and communication engineering and analytics moderate at the Red Cross , was thrilled to get word that folks were get hold forward-looking way to improve Puerto Rico ’s digital mapping .
“ He is doing on the dot what so many mappers before him have done , ” Kunce told Earther . “ Discover a newfangled way to help , a unexampled way to explore the world , and jump in with both groundwork . OpenStreetMap is queerly habit-forming this room , especially when you cognize the data is being used to help oneself mass . As identify , his methodological analysis sound all doable and utile , I be intimate the inventiveness . ”
“ Wow , ” say Ernesto Rodriguez , the meteorologist at the National Weather Service ’s San Juan role who put together the drone footage video along with several friends , when I call to tell him how it was being used . Digital mapping certainly was n’t an applications programme he expected or anticipated .
“ It ’s a simple affair we did to seek to show damages , ” he said . “ And it ’s for communicating with the outside human beings . ”
Right now , Kunce says the Red Cross is not make any new mapping requests on Open Street Map . “ There is more mapping to be done in Puerto Rico , specially the roadstead , ” he say . “ However most of the data that we have is good enough for our needs . ”
That ’s thanks to the 5,300 + military volunteer who have logged 1.2 million buildings over the past five and a half weeks .
Of of course , folk can still help make live digital mapping good — and the good they are , the more prepared relief organizations will be when the next violent storm rolls through . Michael plans to continue his endeavour as long as there ’s room to ameliorate Puerto Rico ’s maps . It ’s become something of a hobbyhorse for him .
“ I used to be a fender so I had a band of experience using maps , ” he said , tot that year back , he take a class on military photo rendition . “ I ’d have to take eight by ten , bootleg and livid photos and site them from multiple artificial satellite and sheet icon , ” to create a montage that others would expend to make a function . “ So I have some experience . ”
“ But you do not call for any of that type of experience , ” he emphasized . “ An amateur can go in and within 30 minutes , they ’re making a valuable contribution . ”
mapping
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , scientific discipline , and cultivation news in your inbox day by day .
News from the future , delivered to your present .
You May Also Like
