In 2017, Hurricane Irma had devastating impacts on much of the Caribbean, especially the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. In fact, nearly all of the buildings on the island of Barbuda were destroyed, and almost the entire population was evacuated to Antigua before or immediately after the storm.
For more context, have a quick look at this reporting from the Guardian, The night Barbuda died: how Hurricane Irma created a Caribbean ghost town [1]. If you have trouble with this link, go to the next page in Canvas.
In this section, you will compare UAV imagery collected soon after the hurricane hit with ‘baseline’ satellite imagery taken before the storm. I want you to contrast the type of information you can get from high-resolution satellite imagery with that from an insanely high-resolution UAV mission. Approach this from the point of view of an emergency manager coordinating search, rescue, and recovery efforts in the immediate aftermath of the event. Also, consider the damage evident in the imagery in support of overall damage assessment and teams entering the field.
The data you will be working with came from a Canada-based group called UAViators [2] and it is distributed on OpenAerialMap [3]. If you are interested in this type of data (for your term project?), the OpenAerialMap website might be a good place to start looking.
Write a short assessment of the situation on the ground, keeping in mind your role as a geospatial analyst supporting operations and field teams.
Submit, along with Part 1, to the GIS and UAV Data Exercise Dropbox.
Links
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/nov/20/the-night-barbuda-died-how-hurricane-irma-created-a-caribbean-ghost-town
[2] http://uaviators.org/
[3] http://openaerialmap.org/
[4] https://data.humdata.org/
[5] https://www.openstreetmap.org/
[6] http://ghdx.healthdata.org/record/antigua-and-barbuda-population-and-housing-census-2011-2012
[7] https://caribbean.eclac.org/countries/antigua-and-barbuda
[8] https://www.digitalglobe.com/opendata
[9] https://openaerialmap.org