Images of flooded freeways, entire neighborhoods underwater, and mountains of debris painted a vivid picture of the extent of the devastation.

But not all impacts of the storm could be seen with the naked eye. Buried underground, natural gas pipelines threatened by Harvey posed a difficult — and potentially deadly — challenge during the recovery. So area utilities turned to a cutting-edge “eye in the sky” developed with support from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).