This last weekend Tropical Cyclone Pam struck the Islands of Vanuatu in the South Pacific causing widespread devastation.
We were asked by a GEB reader whether the satellite imaging companies would be collecting and publishing satellite imagery of Vanuatu. DigitalGlobe has a subscription service called ‘First Look’ that provides access to timely satellite imagery for disaster zones. It is targeted at crisis response organizations. It does not provide the imagery directly to the public. DigitalGlobe does, however, have a publicly available map showing what imagery is made available via the First Look service and it appears that satellites World View 1 and World View 2 have captured a number of images over the last few days of the island of Efate where the capital of Vanuatu lies.
In addition, the New Zealand Herald has published sections of a few of the images showing comparisons of before and after imagery.
DigitalGlobe’s First Look coverage map.
Also on DigitalGlobe’s map you can see the locations of other recent events that you may not have heard of, such as the eruption Costa Rica’s Turrialba Volcano, the eruption of Chile’s Villarica volcano or flooding in Lobito, Angola.
We hope that DigitalGlobe makes the imagery of these locations available to the public at some point in the future, or even better, that they get into Google Earth.
About Timothy Whitehead
Timothy has been using Google Earth since 2004 when it was still called Keyhole before it was renamed Google Earth in 2005 and has been a huge fan ever since. He is a programmer working for Red Wing Aerobatx and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.
Does that mean there is no satellite image from the biggest rallies in France that occured January 11? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_marches
It is possible there is imagery either from DigitalGlobe or other imagery providers depending on weather conditions. However, it would not be included on that map as it is not useful to crisis responders.