When Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of the most powerful
storms ever recorded on Earth, struck the Philippines Nov. 8, 2013, it tore a
wide swath of destruction across large parts of the island
nation.
Image Credit: ASI/NASA/JPL-Caltech
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A new, space-based map generated
by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., in
collaboration with the Italian Space Agency to assist in disaster response
efforts shows the regions in the Philippines hit hardest by Super Typhoon
Haiyan. The typhoon tore a wide swath of devastation across the island nation on
Nov. 8, 2013.
The map, which depicts the storm’s destruction, is available online at:
This 27-by-33-mile (43-by-53-kilometer) map covers a region near Tacloban
City, where the massive storm, one of the most powerful ever recorded on Earth,
made landfall. It was made from radar imagery obtained before and after the
typhoon hit. It was processed by JPL’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis
(ARIA) team using X-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the
Italian Space Agency’s COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation. The technique uses
a prototype algorithm to rapidly detect surface changes caused by natural or
human-produced damage.
The technique is most sensitive to detecting destruction of the human-made
environment. In the image, damage detected by radar is shown as an overlay on a
Google Earth image. Areas in red reflect the heaviest damage to cities and towns
in the storm’s path. The estimated intensity of damage is proportional to the
opacity of the red. When the radar observes areas that have little to no
destruction, its image pixels are transparent. The satellite data used to
generate the map span the time frame from Aug. 19 to Nov. 11, 2013. Each pixel
in the damage map measures approximately 33 yards (30 meters) across.
ARIA is a JPL- and NASA-funded project being developed by JPL and the
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. It is building an automated
system for providing rapid and reliable GPS and satellite data to support the
local, national and international hazard monitoring and response
communities. Using space-based imagery of disasters, ARIA data products can
provide rapid assessments of the geographic region affected by a disaster, as
well as detailed imaging of the locations where damage occurred.
NASA is making the data publicly available for agencies that might be
responding to the event through the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources
Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center’s Hazards Data Distribution System,
as well as through NASA’s ARIA website.
The ARIA team began developing and evaluating this technique using case
studies from the magnitude 6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in
February 2011 to detect building damage, landslides and liquefaction. Following
the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Tohoku, Japan, in March 2011, the team used the
technique to assess tsunami damage, as well as ground deformation from high-rate
GPS network and imaging radar satellites. Those ground-deformation data were
downloaded more than 1,400 times within the first two days they were available.
Following last year’s Hurricane Sandy, the team produced damage maps that were
delivered to the International Charter 11 days after landfall and subsequently
validated with crowdsourcing with the assistance of the GISCorps.
The ARIA team continues to improve its response time for generating products
-- the Haiyan satellite data were available three days after landfall and were
processed within 11 hours of data acquisition. The improved response time has
been aided by NASA’s recent joint collaboration with the Italian Space Agency,
which operates four identical radar satellites.
For more information about ARIA, visit:
Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
ayabaca@gmail.com
ayabaca@hotmail.com
ayabaca@yahoo.com
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