Respond to Disasters Faster with On-Demand Satellite Imagery

Speed is crucial for disaster response. When disasters unfold, the picture on the ground changes rapidly, making it hard for responders to quickly organize teams and send help.

Rapid response time can mean the difference between life and death for people affected by a disaster. The faster that responders can get to a disaster and start helping, the more lives they can save.

Unfortunately, response teams typically must stay a rescue effort until they confirm where help is most needed and what hazards and obstacles they’ll encounter (such as blocked roads and collapsed bridges). A disaster response plan based on outdated information could delay rescue, stall much-needed supplies, or even put public safety teams in danger. To make matters worse, teams scouting an affected area may unintentionally provide conflicting reports.

Disaster response planning teams need accurate, actionable information as fast as possible after an event. That often means gaining updated imagery of the affected area within just a few hours.

Satellite imagery providers have evolved to meet that challenge in three ways: providing imagery quickly, capturing imagery of hard-to-reach places (such as hazardous zones or rural areas), and monitoring recovery changes in the following months to years.

Read on to learn about disaster response for different types of incidents:

In 2020, a neglected stockpile of chemicals caused a massive, devastating explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. The incident  resulted in  at least 218 deaths and 7,000 injuries, and it displaced 300,000 people.

Immediately after the event was reported, the BlackSky platform automatically tasked a satellite to collect an image of the site without human help. The image shows smoke and dust clouds surrounding the bite-shaped explosion site at the Port of Beirut.

This functionality, called tip and cue, helps public safety and relief organizations rapidly review the impact of a major disaster.

An informative image, delivered quickly, can help relief organizations immediately understand the impact of an event and plan response operations.

Earthquakes are another type of disaster requiring quick action. In severe scenarios like the  7.8 magnitude quake  that struck Türkiye and Syria in February 2023, buildings and infrastructure can collapse and trap people. Satellites can image an affected area within hours, helping relief agencies to expedite their decision-making.

Government and humanitarian organizations use BlackSky imagery to inform rescue operations, identify ingress/egress points, as well as aid site selection for staging areas, temporary medical facilities, housing for displaced people, and more.

Satellite imagery providers like BlackSky can also capture imagery of places that are hard to access for disaster response teams. This helps reduce the overall impact of a disaster by shortening the time needed to return affected areas to normal.

For instance, the only paved road that connects northwestern Australia with other parts of the country crosses the Fitzroy River at Fitzroy Crossing. After a massive flood in January 2023, the Fitzroy River Bridge collapsed.

Consequently, communities lost access to emergency services and necessary supplies that typically came from northwestern ports. Vehicles were required to detour hundreds of miles for months until a temporary crossing was placed in May and eventually a new bridge was  completed  in December. The recovery need was urgent, and in situations like this, satellite imagery can help quickly communicate the situation and what needs to be done.

Read on to learn how satellite imagery helps speed up response time for disasters like hurricanes, mining incidents, and more.

 Hurricane Ian  tested disaster response organizations when the storm arrived on Sept. 28, 2022. The storm’s severity peaked at Category Four, with winds reaching up to 155 mph; it caused widespread flooding and damage along the Gulf Coast. The storm made landfall in Florida, killing 146 people and displacing over 300,000 people, as well as causing over US$50 billion in damage to US infrastructure.

The immediate damage created serious issues for Florida residents. Flooded roads and highways delayed rescue and prevented emergency vehicle access. Downed power lines and damage to power stations caused power outages for 2.4 million people and resulted in contaminated drinking water for many residents.

Hurricane Ian partially destroyed the Sanibel Causeway, which connects Sanibel and Captiva islands to the Florida mainland. Satellite imagery immediately captured the extent of the damage, which took three weeks to repair.

Infrastructure like bridges, tunnels, and railways need immediate repair after a disaster so people can resume services and commerce. BlackSky satellite data provides swift context for repair and recovery operations.

Time matters in an emergency. BlackSky satellites, tuned to Hurricane Ian, delivered critical data about the storm’s impacts about half a day before government and commercial aerial imagery providers.

BlackSky rapidly delivers fresh imagery of areas of interest, often hours to days before other data sources, ensuring that teams are not kept waiting through multiple operational periods.

Without timely information about the impact of intense storms like Hurricane Ian, planning and response teams will struggle to quickly assess the damage and identify areas in need of assistance. This is why teams often turn to location-based intelligence services such as BlackSky’s and traditional solutions like aerial imagery.

BlackSky captured imagery of neighborhoods severely damaged by the storm, like mobile home parks, which are often the least equipped to weather storms and the first in need of support.

Read on to learn about two more examples:

Bourke is a small but prominent town on the Darling River in northern central New South Wales, Australia. In the fall of 2022, southeastern Australia experienced torrential rains that flooded the Darling River. Jim Chalmers, Treasurer of Australia,  estimated  that flooding in 2022 created a loss of AUD5 billion for the country’s economy. Munich Re, an insurance company, found the floods caused nearly AUD12 billion in losses.

Flooding affects human life, wildlife, livestock, farmland, natural resources, infrastructure, supply chains, and more. When disaster response teams can rapidly update their common operating picture, they can move faster to protect life and mitigate damage to property.

Large mining operations rely on tailings dams to store water and waste byproducts. Tailings dams are typically earth-filled embankments constructed with varying methods, costs, and effectiveness. Workers and communities depend on the structural integrity of tailings dams, since a collapse can create massive public health risks. Investors track the dams’ stability to judge the risks of their investments, as Reuters  reports .

One famous example of a tailings dam disaster happened in September 2022 at Jagersfontein Mine in South Africa. It  reportedly  “unleashed a flood of grey sludge that swept away houses and cars, polluted rivers, and damaged 2,615 hectares of grazing land, according to government estimates.”

For dangerous situations like vulnerable dams, satellite data can enable rapid assessment of affected areas so response teams can go where they’re most needed.

In addition to the variety of examples above, low-latency satellite imagery can improve disaster response for emergencies like tornadoes, wildfires, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and more.

Low-latency satellite imagery can be incredibly beneficial for disaster response efforts. By planning and collecting imagery before a storm hits, it is possible to process and leverage the data within hours of the damage occurring. This can help restore a common operating picture for state and local response teams, enabling better decision-making and prioritization of areas for response. This can ultimately reduce response time and save lives.

Satellite imagery can also capture areas that other providers do not or cannot capture. For example, aerial imagery vendors seldom fly in remote or rural areas. Satellites are more likely to offer global coverage. Also, since some providers are often paid by insurance companies rather than state agencies, a disaster’s effect on natural areas can be missed.

In some places like the Sanibel Causeway after Hurricane Ian, repairs can be completed in weeks. In others, like the tailings dam collapse in South Africa, full recovery and repair may be confirmed months later. Because satellites circle the globe many times a day, they can be used to regularly capture new imagery of affected places, providing disaster recovery teams an updated picture of progress.

Low-latency satellite imagery from BlackSky empowers emergency and first responders by providing them with the information they need to make critical decisions. BlackSky offers global coverage, enabling imagery capture in remote or hazardous places. And finally, repeat monitoring from BlackSky records recovery after an incident, enabling better preparedness for the next disaster.

Learn more about how BlackSky can help you prepare for disasters or gain imagery of current incidents. Visit  www.blacksky.com  or contact  sales@blacksky.com  to get started.