Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management - ISPRS

Discussion and conclusions
The Haiti earthquake clearly demonstrated that
optical remote sensing is a valuable post-earthquake
damage assessment tool and that satellite/aerial
data providers have the capabilities to timely trigger
image acquisition and to make available the data to
the humanitarian community. But it also
demonstrated that above all the establishment of
good coordination bodies equipped with proper
supporting tools is crucial.
But if unhappily, persistent clouds had covered the
affected areas on the days after the event, all the
optical data would have been useless. The role of
radar remote sensing (not only aimed at identifying
the main faults by measuring ground displacements)
in the post-earthquake damage assessment should
certainly be a research priority in the radar
community. As an operational alternative, the
capabilities of new low cost devices aimed at
performing ground surveys should be further
exploited. Figure 11 shows the user interface and
some sample pictures of a LCMMS (Low Cost Mobile
Mapping System) equipped with 4 webcams and a
GPS (Figure 10) aimed at acquiring georeferenced
frames. The system, developed by ITHACA and
Politecnico di Torino, allows acquisition of about half
million frames and 60 thousand GPS points during a
5 days ground survey in Port-au-Prince.
Figure 10: LCMMS device installed on
top of a car during a ground survey in
Port-au-Prince
Figure 11: GIS customized software for LCMMS data
visualization and processing
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