Attachments
A project employing drones in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan explored how aerial imagery might support recovery and reconstruction activities. Ultimately, the imagery captured by drones became useful in both a tactical and strategic sense during the retrofitting of shelters, and helped not only to identify and verify the shelter sites, but also to help determine the placement of latrines. The mission provided a rich learning experience on the operational use of aerial robotics in a disaster recovery context.
Background
In November 2013, the Philippines experienced one of the strongest and deadliest tropical cyclones ever recorded. Typhoon Haiyan resulted in well over 6 000 deaths and devastated the city of Tacloban along with the islands of Leyte and Panaon, among other regions. The Category 5 super typhoon also displaced more than 6 million people and left almost 2 million more homeless. One of the first international humanitarian organizations to respond was Medair. They arrived in country just 48 hours after the typhoon to conduct their initial disaster damage and needs assessments, but their efforts were hampered by the lack of accurate and up-to-date maps of the region. In fact, in many instances Medair teams had to rely on hand drawn maps or outdated imagery provided by Google.
This lack of accurate geographic data explains why Medair teamed up with the Swissbased Drone Adventures group in March 2014. Medair was keen to explore what role aerial imagery could play in providing better maps and believed that this imagery could also potentially support shelter construction and more specifically an element of disaster risk reduction (DRR) within shelter construction. To this end, over the course of six days, Drone Adventures used fixed-wing UAVs called eBees to carry out aerial surveys of Tacloban,
Dulag and Julita municipalities and of the east coast of Leyte to assess the disaster damage and to support shelter reconstruction activities. The use of drones did not take place within the emergency phase but was rather carried out to explore how aerial imagery might support the recovery and reconstruction activities.