![]() ![]() Disaster relief efforts will also benefit from SAR imagery, which will enable us to assess conditions on the ground more quickly, even if the storm clouds have not yet cleared. "We’ll be able to monitor agriculture during monsoon season, a key part of the growing cycle. "With SAR imagery, we’ll be able to count cars in parking lots at night, giving us a more complete picture of overall traffic," the company wrote in a blog post. Because the images are taken of the same areas at nearly the same time, it becomes easier to train both people and machines how SAR images correspond to the real world.Ī lot of how the company uses its technology to interpret SAR images is still in the R&D phase, but it claims that there's a lot of potential applications for the use of SAR images to complement the imaging work that it already does. To that end, the company has partnered with its image providers to obtain images from coordinated SAR imaging and drone flights with regular cameras. "The biggest challenge is that you have to have people who interpret SAR images to train the deep learning algorithm," said Crawford. At a cost, though - raw SAR images don't immediately look recognizable, and so it requires some training to understand what you're looking at. The resulting image is high-resolution and can peek right through clouds. SAR images come from a satellite electronically simulating a large radar antenna using its own flight path. That's where Synthetic Aperture Radar (or SAR) data comes in. That means that it's hard to tell from satellites how high flood waters during a storm. Energy Environment A CHRONICLE INVESTIGATION Developing Storm A seven-part Houston Chronicle series explains why Harveys damage was both a natural and man-made disaster. "If there are clouds, you can't get images." "If there's a flood, chances are there were clouds," said Crawford. And one reason why floods are hard to forecast? Clouds. The flood maps derived from the SNPP VIIRS and GOES-16 ABI observations. For example, FEMA flood mapping missed 75% of the actual floods that occurred in Houston between 19. Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a Category-4 storm in the United States on 25. One reason why that is is that floods are simply difficult to forecast. FEMA's flood insurance program is about $25 billion in debt. Risk: A Case Study of Hurricane Harvey Using a unique, loan-level database that combines post-disaster home inspection data, flood zone designations. Also note that many roadways are marked as flooded when they weren't - the process has a hard time separating the two. That work earned the newspaper some awards.Why are Orbital Insight's customers interested in flood data? Because flood insurance is big business - premiums come in at about $3 billion per year - but flood models are in dire need of improvement. Post-Harvey estimate of surface water Pre-Harvey estimate of surface water Note that in those rasters, the value 0 indicates water and 1 indicates something else. An investigation and handful of late night stakeouts he did resulted in getting two public officials sacked. Alfonso also published deep dives into 4chan and Tumblr’s history while hounding Reddit administrators to answer for a controversial forum.Īlfonso started his career as a crime and education reporter at The Post-Standard. He also produced a series of stories on a disgraced family court judge.Īlfonso was the Daily Dot’s first art director and an early staff writer before joining the Herald-Leader. He was hired at the company before it launched in the fall of 2011. The Daily Dot sent him on a GIF-fueled road trip across the country and helped him manufacture his own Ecstasy-free tablets. He also taught some journalism courses at the University of Kentucky.Īlfonso split his time at the Leader covering breaking news and combing the internet for Kentucky-specific content such as the story on one of Eastern Kentucky’s most iconic images and how one heroin addict used social media and science to cope. Credit: Oregon DCLD One year ago, on August 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey struck Texas the first major. Fernando Alfonso III is a digital reporter for the Houston Chronicle.īefore joining the Chronicle, Alfonso was a reporter for Lexington’s Herald-Leader. Flood risk map for Multnomah County, Oregon, based on FEMA hazard assessment. ![]()
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