Disaster Mapping

Use Cases for Damage Mapping with Drones After Storms

1. Rapid Area-Wide Assessments

• Challenge: Storms can affect large areas, making it difficult and slow for ground teams to survey damage.

• Drone Advantage: Drones can cover miles in a single flight, capturing high-resolution images and geospatial data quickly.

• Benefit: Rapid situational awareness for emergency responders, utilities, and local governments — helping prioritize resources effectively.

2. Infrastructure & Utility Damage Documentation

• Challenge: Downed power lines, damaged substations, and collapsed poles are dangerous to approach and hard to document manually.

• Drone Advantage: Drones inspect hard-to-reach infrastructure safely from the air, even in areas inaccessible by vehicle.

• Benefit: Speeds up repair timelines and helps utility companies quickly restore service with accurate, up-to-date data.

3. Insurance Claims & Documentation

• Challenge: Policyholders and adjusters need fast, detailed evidence of storm damage for claims, especially across multiple properties.

• Drone Advantage: Drones collect consistent, time-stamped images and videos that clearly show property damage, roof issues, flooding, and debris.

• Benefit: Accelerates claims processing, reduces fraud, and eliminates delays due to adjuster availability or unsafe conditions.

4. Search and Rescue Support

• Challenge: In flooded or heavily damaged areas, locating people in need is time-critical and difficult from the ground.

• Drone Advantage: Drones with thermal or zoom cameras can scan wide areas quickly, helping locate people trapped or injured.

• Benefit: Improves response time and increases the odds of safe recovery in disaster zones.

5. Municipal & Government Assessments

• Challenge: Cities and counties must assess damage to roads, public buildings, bridges, and parks before requesting disaster relief funds.

• Drone Advantage: Drones provide clear evidence and detailed orthomosaic maps that support funding requests and repair planning.

• Benefit: Streamlines FEMA documentation and helps prioritize public works projects.

6. Before-and-After Mapping for Disaster Response

• Challenge: Understanding the full extent of storm damage requires comparing pre- and post-event data.

• Drone Advantage: If baseline data exists (or is captured regularly), new drone flights after a storm can produce accurate change detection maps.

• Benefit: Supports transparent reporting, forensic analysis, and efficient recovery planning.

7. Environmental Impact Monitoring

• Challenge: Storms can cause erosion, chemical runoff, tree loss, and wildlife habitat damage that's hard to see from the ground.

• Drone Advantage: Drones can monitor changes in shoreline, vegetation, and waterways using visual, thermal, or multispectral sensors.

• Benefit: Assists conservation groups, environmental engineers, and restoration teams with data-driven decisions.