Satellite Imagery and On-Site Crowdsourcing for Improved Crisis Resilience

Abstract

Managing natural or human-made crisis events involves making decisions based on information gathered directly by first responders in the field using information and communication technologies (ICT), in combination with remote sensing (satellite, Earth Observation - EO) technologies delivering images and sensor data. For efficient crisis and disaster management, this information needs to be timely available and as accurate as possible, meaning that the available technologies need to be intelligently selected and combined to meet such requirements. In this short paper, we present such an approach in which semi-automatized analytics using combination of very high-resolution EO imagery and crowdsourcing technologies is demonstrated to improve and optimize the efficiency of crisis management before, during and after disaster events.