Damage Assessment

After a natural disaster hits there is a need to know exactly what has been damaged and where to allocate resources. Traditionally this involves people (city officials, first responders, and insurance companies) driving block to block photographing and charting damage onto existing maps. This tedious process takes too long and is prone to errors. Now with Hivemapper, using video or LiDAR collected off any aerial platform (and soon ground based vehicles) you can build maps that automatically see and reveal changes. Assessing damages is now done quickly and efficiently using machine vision technology.

Coffey Park

One of the most devastated areas was Coffey Park — a densely populated neighborhood of single family homes. A map of the area five months after the fire shows an entire neighborhood leveled to the ground.

Map of Coffey Park after fire

Journey’s End mobile home park

By using our Change Detection technology the map is highlighted in green anywhere a set amount of change is detected against the LiDAR basemap. Hivemapper also lets you quickly view the LiDAR layer for fast and easy comparison and verification. You can use this to quickly see exactly how many structures were destroyed like in this mobile home park.

Change Detection map of Journey’s End mobile home park

Fountaingrove

Another severely damaged neighborhood was in Fountaingrove. Here you can quickly see Change Detection automatically identify the footprint of every destroyed home even when the borders between lots are indistinguishable. A quick look at the LiDAR layer reveals what the neighborhood use to look like.

Homes on Bella Vista Way destroyed

Recovery

With a comprehensive 3D map of the most impacted areas of Santa Rosa new videos now not only generated change detection data from LiDAR but also from the prior maps generated after the fire.

New home construction

Here, another location in Fountaingrove, you can see a new house under construction as well as details like moved vehicles and equipment, removed vegetation, and remaining sites with debris having been cleared highlighted on the map.

New house on Gardenview Circle

Clearing debris

Keysight Technologies, a company headquartered in the Fountaingrove area, was relatively lucky as they seemed to have little damage to structures. However, many of the trees on the property were damaged and by July there was a large pile of logs near a patch where burned tree’s once stood.

Keysight Technologies removes burned trees from property

New apartment building

Directly across the street Oakmont of Varenna retirement community had burned to the ground but by October a new building was already framed up.

Oakmont of Varenna rebuilt

Coffey Park returns

By October, 2018 Coffey Park was covered in new homes in various stages of development. In Change Detection mode new structures appear bright blue with many areas on the ground appearing red as sites are flattened and prepared for new construction.