GeoEye responds to the Haiti Disaster

As soon as news broke that there was a major earthquake in Haiti, GeoEye mission planners directed the GeoEye-1 satellite to collect color, 0.41-cm ground resolution imagery over Port-au-Prince. On Jan. 13, from 423 miles in space, GeoEye-1 collected almost 3,000 square kilometers beginning at 10:27 a.m. EST. The imagery was downlinked to our ground station in Tromso, Norway and sent to our Dulles, Virginia production facility for processing. Sample pre- and post-earthquake imagery is featured in our online gallery at: www.geoeye.com. GeoEye-1 collected stereo pairs over Port-au-Prince on Jan. 16.

The resulting imagery products are being used by the geospatial community as a basemap to produce multiple-layer relief maps to help first responders assess the damage, plan routes and relief efforts and respond effectively. These products include graphics of major infrastructure such as airports, hospitals, police and fire stations, emergency operations centers, hazardous material locations, roads and schools.

In collaboration with Google, GeoEye is now serving-up all new GeoEye-1 satellite imagery over the affected area at no charge to governments and relief agencies for relief operations. Almost 3,000 square kilometers of half-meter ground resolution imagery is accessible through the Google “geo-cloud” at http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/geoeye.html. This site contains imagery in full-resolution GeoTIFF format so you will need specialized software to view the data – eMap can assist you with finding freeware tools to view this imagery.

Shaun Callaghan
GeoEye
Manager, Partner Development

The images below were captured over Haiti on January 13, 2010 by GeoEye-1 to assist with the recovery efforts.