Ortho Imagery for Tornado Damage Assessment and Ortho Imagery for Tornado Damage Assessment and Lessons Learned Lessons Learned

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Wednesday April 27Wednesday April 27thth - What Just Happened? - What Just Happened?(approximate times)(approximate times)

• 4:00 PM – Received news via local TV stations of tornado damage in Phil Campbell in

Franklin County

• 4:45 PM– Received a call from my daughter, a junior at the University of Alabama,

saying a tornado was on the ground in Tuscaloosa near the campus

• 5:00 PM– Lost electricity in Huntsville

• 5:30 PM– Local radio stated that damage had occurred in Harvest just northwest of

Huntsville

April 27April 27th th 8:00 PM – What We Knew 8:00 PM – What We Knew• Tornados had apparently hit Franklin, Madison and

Tuscaloosa Counties• Power was out in Huntsville and possibly all of Madison and

several other counties – Power was out at our Huntsville office and at Courtland in Lawrence County

where our 4 aircraft are based at Tennessee Valley Air Center

• Cell phone coverage was very weak and spotty across Huntsville

• With no internet, TV, and limited cell phone, communications were very difficult and as such, our understanding of the magnitude of the storm event was significantly impaired

April 27April 27th th 8:00 PM – What We Knew 8:00 PM – What We Knew

• Our Fixed Base Operator in Courtland had sustained light damage to the facilities and one aircraft was destroyed, but fortunately none of our aircraft had been damaged.

• The decision was made to attempt to acquire aerial imagery the following morning (April 28th ) for the three small areas we believed to be damaged (Tuscaloosa, Phil Campbell (Lawrence County) and Harvest (Madison County)– In the past, we have flown tornado damage assessment imagery for our

County clients involving typically one or two small areas

April 27April 27thth Acquisition Plan Acquisition PlanBased on Information To DateBased on Information To Date

April 27April 27th th 9:00 PM – Project Planning 9:00 PM – Project PlanningChallengesChallenges

• With no electricity in Huntsville, all project planning was performed by one of our remote employees in South Carolina– With limited or no communications, we were not exactly certain where the

damage had occurred and had to rely on what our remote staff could find on the internet.

– Our digital cameras run off software that requires a computer generated flight so ultimately, we were making an educated guess

– Weather – timing was critical so imagery had to be acquired many times in and around cloudy conditions

• Based on what our remote staff was seeing on the news and the internet, we began to get an understanding that the damage might be more widespread than previous storms

April 28April 28th th 7:00 AM – What We Knew 7:00 AM – What We Knew

• We arrived at the Courtland airport at 6 AM Friday morning to find the runway covered with debris from an apparent tornado that passed about 2500 feet off the east end of the runway the previous afternoon. – It took most of the day to adequately clear the runways so that we could be

airborne on April 29th.– Interestingly, we would eventually found out that this may have been the

same tornado that had hit Hackleburg (Marion County), Phil Campbell (Franklin County) and Harvest (Madison County)

– Another interesting point is that, among other things, numerous pairs of pants were found among the debris scattered across the air field. We found out later that they came from the Wrangler plant in Hackleburg almost 38 miles to the southwest.

Imagery Acquisition and Requests For Imagery Acquisition and Requests For AssistanceAssistance

• Imagery acquisition for Phil Campbell, Tuscaloosa and Harvest began on April 29th

– The first orthos from this imagery were delivered on Sunday May 1st – Our flight crew indicated the damage was far worse than anything they had seen

• This same weekend, we began to receive requests from County agencies for further imagery assistance

• Within a few days, we began to receive requests from state and federal agencies for additional imagery scattered over the northern half of the state

– What we believed might involve 1-2 days of imagery acquisition in 3 different counties eventually evolved into over 2 weeks of acquisition in 20 counties within the State of Alabama

– In a time of crisis, we felt compelled to do what we could to help out

Composite map of all Tornado (red), Severe Thunderstorm (yellow) and Flood warnings (green) issued throughout the

major tornado outbreak on April 27, 2011.

Final Imagery AcquisitionFinal Imagery AcquisitionTornado Damage AssessmentTornado Damage Assessment

Acquired Digital Ortho Imagery for 20 Counties Acquired Digital Ortho Imagery for 20 Counties

Acquisition and ProcessingAcquisition and ProcessingChallengesChallenges

• Early flight plans were not always complete in coverage, but were more of a general idea of where tornados were thought to have traveled. This was due to the widespread power outages and unconfirmed information at the time.

– Imagery was acquired at a 1 foot pixel size

Ortho Processing Ortho Processing ChallengesChallenges

• Power was out across all of Madison County and most of north Alabama (including our Huntsville office)

• On April 29th we moved several image and ortho workstations from our local office to a local Huntsville hotel (running off a large generator) so that we could begin processing the raw imagery.– Several members of our staff moved into the hotel and worked

around the clock to process the imagery, perform AT and generate the digital orthos

– Processing was done around the clock to ensure expedited delivery to local, state, and federal agencies

– Hexagon Geomatics (Intergraph ZI Imaging) provided temporary software licenses as there was no access to our license servers

Data Transportation Data Transportation ChallengesChallenges

• Due to the mandatory daylight to dark curfew, transport of raw imagery from the air crew in (Courtland, AL) to the processing team in Huntsville had to be done during day light hours

• Transport of processed digital orthos to emergency and county officials had to be done during day light hours as well

• Because of power and communication issues across the state, multiple copies of the imagery had to be generated and delivered to local (county/city), state (EMA, Homeland Security) and federal (FEMA, USGS, National Guard etc.) officials

Data Users Data Users

• FEMA, State and County EMA• Virtual Alabama • National Guard• Law Enforcement • Alabama Department of Criminal Justice• Fire Districts • Volunteer Groups• USGS EROS Center• University of Alabama School of Engineering• University of Alabama Huntsville • Iowa State University

Hackleburg, AlHackleburg, Al

Tuscaloosa Tornado Path

Jefferson County Jefferson County

Lesson Learned Lesson Learned – Providers of emergency data need to establish a protocol for

continuing production of vital data during times of widespread power outage

• We were fortunate that a local hotel had access to a large generator

– The state should consider establishing a contract vehicle whereby companies/organizations/personnel responsible for planning, acquiring, processing, storing and delivering emergency response data could be engaged within minutes/hours of an emergency event

• We received many and varying requests from local, state and federal agencies

• Establishment of statewide on-call contracts could help alleviate confusion as to where agencies can go to get the data

Lesson Learned Lesson Learned – The state should consider selecting a single organization to act as a

liaison to provide communication between data processors/generators and users

• A single point of contact to provide acceptance and dissemination of emergency data would be very helpful

– If a single point of contact cannot be established, the state should consider determining in advance who/what agencies should receive emergency response data

– Many agencies/organizations could have benefited from our data if they had a means to access the data so that they could have received it sooner

• We sometimes had a difficult time getting the data from an entry point to the end users inside the local government agencies.