Of popular mechanics
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Last week’s explosion in Beirut claimed more than 200 lives, injured thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage.
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NASA researchers – in collaboration with colleagues from Singapore’s Earth Observatory – have mapped the extent of the damage.
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The Damage Proxy Cards can be used to focus relief efforts on the most vulnerable regions.
Last week, an explosion shook Beirut, the capital of Lebanon. More than 200 people died and thousands were injured in the blast, which occurred after detonating 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate. The port city suffered billions of dollars in damage in the wake of the blast and, according to UNICEF, left hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
The blast has sparked a series of protests and the dismissal of a number of the country’s leaders, including its prime minister. Now, the residents of Beirut – already struggling to control the coronavirus pandemic – are left to pick up the pieces. Satellite images of the region, such as the MAXAR video below, are beginning to reveal the true devastation of the explosion.
NASA’s Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team – along with Singapore’s Earth Observatory – is collecting satellite-derived synthetic aperture radar data to map the damage.
Each pixel in the image represents an area of about 33 yards, with dark red pixels indicating where the damage was most severe and yellow pixels indicating where the least amount of damage occurred.
The ARIA team has constructed maps like these for other disasters. In the wake of the Palu earthquake in 2018, for example, NASA published a similar proxy map for damage, which posed the risk of landing gear around the Indonesian city.
Researchers hope that maps like these can help providers assess where to focus their efforts.
You might as well go over
