RAPID: Automated Target Detection Tool for Disaster Response

Rochester Institute Of Tech, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) project from Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) seeks to develop and evaluate an automated target detection tool for disaster response. In the aftermath of the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti and in accordance with the mission of the Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER) (Partnerships for Innovation (PFI) Award 0917839) to achieve innovation in disaster management, the objective of the development of this tool is to provide a mechanism that will assist emergency response personnel in quickly identifying desired targets in a large collection of imagery. The intent is for the tool to run on commonly available systems (supporting both desktops as well as laptops that might be used in the field), needing no more than recently collect imager to process. A user will examine one typical image and identify for the tool a particular target based on simple matches of color and tolerance properties. Using standard and well-established supervised image classification techniques, this tool will then proceed to locate similar targets in all other images across a large area, as directed by the user. The work will address the important question of how to provide useful information to onsite responders to disasters and emergencies, when the specific questions and the type of information that is useful are dependent upon local events and circumstances. A prototype of the algorithm has already shown that it can locate encampments of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Haiti disaster environment using imagery from the RIT Wildfire Airborne Sensing Program (WASP),an airborne imaging system, utilized during seven days of flyovers (January 21-27, 2010) of the earthquake ravaged areas for Haiti funded by the World Bank. In the context of the 1TB of data collected during the Haiti flyovers, the project will be able construct an end-user tool and evaluate its usefulness, and, by proxy, the usefulness of similar analytical tools in an operational environment. In the near term, this automated tool can be provided to responders on the ground so that food, water, and medicine can be brought to the internally displaced persons (IDPs), thus contributing to meeting the urgent needs onsite in Haiti.