Page 37 - A U4SSC deliverable - Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies

In focus – the camp fire in 2018, California

In November 2018, California experienced the most devastating and destructive wildfire in its history. The
fire covered more than 150 000 acres of land and destroyed over 18 000 structures. The total damage was
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estimated to be USD 16.5 billion. At least 86 lives were lost. Towns and cities within the state of California
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including Paradise, Concow and Orville, were heavily damaged, with Paradise being almost completely
destroyed.
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Humanitarian drones played a significant role in aiding the relief efforts in the camp fire. Emergency crews
used UAEs to obtain aerial images to map the destruction in order to aid the recovery process. It is estimated
that 16 teams of public safety officials completed more than 500 drone flights, capturing over 70 000
images, over 500 GB of data, of the surrounding towns such as Paradise and Magalia.
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Figure 7: An image of the Camp Fire taken from a drone (Source)

These data have proven vital in supporting the search and rescue operations. The captured images were
transformed into maps that are geo-referenced, dated, time stamped and overlaid on street names to
assist disaster respondents to identify areas that were no longer recognisable and to formulate recovery
strategies. The drone images were also turned into 360° imagery that allowed respondents to interact with
the images, thereby gaining a better understanding and awareness of the situations, which was crucial to
formulating effective relief efforts. The images also helped to identify the conditions of people’s homes,
which was useful for filing insurance claims.

Accelerating city transformation using frontier technologies | A U4SSC deliverable 27