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satya@GISdevelopment.net  Sitting in the National Disaster Response cell, I received an update on my cellphone from the weather department about a major hurricane striking the SW coast within a couple of hours, which is within few miles form the financial capital. I had to prepare a evacuation plan for the coastal city. As if this was not enough, the cellphone beeped again with another message about an earthquake in the central part, close to the business hub. Both the disaster needed immediate attention towards preparing the evacuation plan for the coastal city and the recovery plan for the earthquake hit region. I logged on to my system and looked for the possible satellites available above the two regions. I found ASWE637, a 0.2m resolution satellite, available over the central part and ZNTR-HR, recently launched meteorology cum remote sensing satellite available for the coastal region, which can also provide 0.1m resolution satellite image, on demand. Both the satellites are new into the orbit and had demonstrated their capabilities in the lab, but this would be their D-day, when people from my department would use the images for their practical usage. I quickly called two of my best officers, one was playing a game of squash and other was in a meeting with his client. Luckily, both of them were in the 20 floor building, which houses this response cell. We immediately moved to the 19th floor, which has all the data receiving and processing capabilities. For want of time we had to get the processed data from the satellite. In other times, we would have downloaded the data and processed at our processing centre. We all logged on to three different terminals and Jermy started looking at the ASWE637 data and Noni looked at ZNTR-HR data. Jermy logged on to the satellite and accessed the available data. He found the data was available for the last three hours and could be used. He ran the OBPR (Object Based Pattern Recognition) algorithm and the computer in the satellite processed the satellite image for the last three hours. The satellite identified the damaged physical infrastructure and prepared a new image and sent a message that the required image is available for download. Before downloading the processed image, Jermy ran the RNV module to convert the identified infrastructures to vector. By the time, the image was downloaded (at a speed of 1Tbps), the vector map of the destroyed assets were also prepared. Jermy used the GIS software available with him and overlaid the new map with the archive map of the region. The house numbers and other data were extracted from the archived map and was integrated with the new map. This gave an estimate of the extent of the damages and the number of people affected. Using the recently acquired satellite image and the updated vector map, Jermy was able to prepare the disaster recovery plan for the region in 45minutes and was sent to the relief commissioner and the mayor of the city for further action. While Jermy was assimilating the data for the central region, Noni was busy with the data of the coastal region. Meanwhile, I logged into the department of defence special service (disaster cell has a authorised login) and looked for the available UAVs. There was a UAV at 15deg oblique angle from the coastal city. I requested for a special permission to manoeuvre the UAV and the camera. While, I waited for the permission to be granted, Noni had already downloaded the required data for the entire coastal region with the 'eye of the storm' at the centre of each of the scene. She prepared the map showing the path of the hurricane and projected that the hurricane may strike the coastal city within 115minutes. The message was relayed to all the mobile service providers, ham radio operators and hobbyists with a request that the message be transmitted to all the subscribers, with a caution not to panic, but to be prepared. Beep, and the message in my mobile was the confirmation of the permission granted to access the UAV and its data, as per my requirement. I again logged onto the department of defence website and accessed the UAV though the received authorised login id and password. I manoeuvred the UAV vertically to the coastal city through the path of the hurricane and operated only the Thermal IR camera, LiDAR and the Z-band frequency of SAR. This generated three different maps not only for the coastal region but also for the path of the hurricane. I tried to keep the sensors and camera of the UAV over the 'eye of the storm' and kept monitoring its progress. A feed from the same monitoring screen was given to the national TV broadcasting station, which helped the citizens, actually watch the progress of the hurricane. When 35minuts were left for the hurricane to strike the coastal region, we could see the hurricane getting weak and changing its course due to the low pressure area in the Kings island, 500miles further SW of the coastal city. This gave us some relief, however, the earthquake hit region demanded our early attention. I asked Noni to keep an eye on the hurricane and hurried to Jermy for possible assistance. I logged out of the UAV's manoeuvrability menu, not before putting it to its original course and also deactivated my login id and password. Page 1 of 1
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