A Situation Room for Haiti Damage Assessment and Reconstruction

In a situation room at the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC, Google, Microsoft, McKinsey, ImageCAT, EERI, and RIT are working with multilateral organizations and NGOs to coordinate the Haiti reconstruction efforts. From the feature story:

An inconspicuous room in the World Bank’s Latin American & Caribbean division has become the eyes and ears of the soon-to-be-launched reconstruction operation of Haiti following the devastating January 12 earthquake.

Armed with top of the line, high-tech equipment to assess damage on the ground and with a great deal of enthusiasm and good will from colleagues from around the world, the small team manning this improvised "situation room" collects data and images of the flattened buildings in Port-au-Prince that are then processed and passed on to an army of experts getting ready to go to Haiti in a few weeks to start the arduous assessment and reconstruction process.

The operation bridges cutting-edge technology with international development expertise to help with assessment and planning:

Operation coordinator Galen Evans explains that the images they’re collecting are breaking new ground in aerial damage assessment as image precision is well above the satellite imagery standard of 60 centimeters of resolution. The photos being taken are 15 centimeters of resolution which means that experts would be able to figure out the position of objects as small as 15 centimeters in size (20 inches).

Read the full story for more information about the situation room and the groundbreaking technology being used in the reconstruction efforts. A few more photos from the situation room are below.