Drones, GIS and Cameras Are Transforming Disaster Assessment

In a matter of days a picturesque lakeside North Carolina town was transformed from the iconic backdrop of “Dirty Dancing” to a scene of catastrophic flooding as Hurricane Helene hit.

Video from the Weather Channel painted a grim picture of the aftermath.

But it wasn’t long before the recovery efforts near Lake Lure looked more like the set of a futuristic sci-fi movie, as ultra-high resolution drones zipped through the area at speeds up to 20 miles per hour, surveying and capturing detailed imagery data of the debris and crumbling infrastructure.

The tech-powered damage assessment project had a simple goal: find out how much damage there was, and where it was, as quickly as possible to fast-track federal funding for the cleanup and repair process.

ICF, a consulting and technology services company, was contracted by Lake Lure as well as several other towns, counties and utilities to get the project off the ground.

It became their largest continuous drone operation in the company’s history, covering an area of more than 100 miles in one month’s time. The drones provided the pictures allowing the ICF team to pinpoint more than 1,400 spots of debris, washouts or other damage. The company estimates the process was five to seven times faster than traditional methods of sending assessment crews on foot.

“Instead of having site inspectors out there for longer periods of time, [drones] accomplish a lot more at a lower cost,” said Edward Fernandez, vice president and disaster management mitigation lead for ICF, in an interview with Government Technology.

ICF

The technology didn’t just capture photos, it was integrated with a system that rapidly translated that data into work orders to deploy crews. ICF says this new way of surveying damage can help secure Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funding in record time.

“Through this process, time is of the essence,” said Fernandez. “The sooner you get in your damages and your debris costs, the sooner you get reimbursed, and often it’s at a higher cost share.”

Traditionally, local governments do damage assessments by inspecting areas near utilities in vehicles or on foot, or conducting site visits throughout the community.

ICF was well poised to take a geospatial approach, as they were already working with several local communities in the area on hazard mitigation when Hurricane Helene arrived.

ICF

According ICF Director of Remote Sensing and GIS Capabilities Jim Valenza, the team was able to leverage that prior GIS planning to strategically station drone teams according to airspace and battery limitations to quickly create maps and build an operations dashboard.

The drones flew at altitudes of 200 to 400 feet, capturing ultra-high-resolution imagery of 3 cm per pixel.

“You can see one panel from a roof missing, or you can literally count the shingles because of the altitude we’re flying at and the resolution of the sensors we have,” said Valenza.

Behind the scenes, strict security measures were taken to protect the captured images. Stored on mini SD cards on the drones, the data was then uploaded to a secure cloud processing station.

“Everything is behind a secure firewall,” said Valenza. “We take data privacy very seriously. Not only for the community, but we’re often working with critical infrastructure like wastewater or energy-related assets. The same risk and vulnerabilities exposed from a natural hazard perspective could also be an issue with malicious actors. Security is the utmost of importance.”

As far as citizen privacy, ICF took a proactive approach to letting residents know what was happening.

“We had signage with a QR code where the drone pilots were stationed,” said Fernandez. “So if somebody in the community saw us out there and were wondering what we were doing, they could actually come scan the QR code and learn more about the initiative. Building that trust is really, really important prior to getting out there and running the drones.”

Once captured and uploaded, the images were reviewed by human beings, inspecting each corridor for damage to shape recovery and mitigation projects.

But in the future, there’s a potential for that work to be tackled by AI.

As Valenza suggests, that future is “not so distant,” as ICF will use the data from this project to train enhanced AI detection models with a higher level of accuracy.

However, the technological leap from human to AI damage assessments hinges on a robust GIS infrastructure. It’s a stark reminder that even the most advanced AI is only as capable as the data that precedes it.