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Update 9/25/2017: Pre- and post-event data is now available on the Open Data site program page. In what has been an overwhelming hurricane season, Hurricane Maria has swept across the Virgin Islands as a Category 5 storm and Wednesday plowed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm leaving most of the island without power. [caption id="attachment_6011" align="alignnone" width="1888"] Roseau, Dominica captured by WorldView-2. The image on left was collected on May 1, 2017 and the image on the right was collected on September 22, 2017.[/caption] DigitalGlobe has mobilized resources within our company to support immediate relief efforts following the storm’s wake. As part of our Open Data Program, DigitalGlobe will publicly release pre- and post-event imagery of the affected areas to support disaster response. We are currently tasking our satellites to capture imagery of the regions in the storm’s path as part of our FirstLook crisis response program. As with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, we will need to wait for cloud cover to clear before we can collect post-event imagery. Once the weather clears, the post-event imagery collected will be available through our Open Data Program site. Pre-event imagery is currently available, but please continue to check this blog post for updates on image collection. In addition to pre- and post-event imagery, we plan to support Maria response through these efforts: Supporting partners on the ground DigitalGlobe is partnered with the United Nations to ensure our open data is used to aid in relief efforts. Crowdsourcing Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) tasks have been set up for Maria using DigitalGlobe pre-event imagery. Help map affected communities here: http://tasks.hotosm.org/?sort_by=priority&direction=asc&search=hurricane+maria Once post-event satellite imagery is available, DigitalGlobe’s Tomnod crowdsourcing team will run a campaign at tomnod.com to help with damage assessments. We will continue to update this blog post and our social media feeds as data becomes available.
Header image: GOES-16 geocolor image of Hurricane Maria over Puerto Rico as it made landfall on September 20, 2017. Credit: CIRA
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