Use of Mobile Lidar Data to Assess Hurricane Damage and Visualize Community Vulnerability

Hurricane Sandy, the worst storm of its type to hit U.S. New York City and the state of New Jersey in generations, caused devastating damage to the region's infrastructure, properties, and businesses. Various technologies for the acquisition of geospatial information have been used since the landing of Hurricane Sandy to support critical decision making related to search and rescue, damage assessment, environmental risk analysis, debris removal, and rebuilding processes. The challenge is to match the best sensing method with the desired postdisaster applications. A large-scale application of mobile terrestrial laser scanning technology to posthurricane situations is described for the support of disaster recovery operations in the United States. Several innovative data analysis approaches for supporting damage assessment and flood resilience analysis are presented. Opportunities for and challenges presented by the use of mobile terrestrial laser scanning to support postdisaster recovery operations are discussed to highlight future research directions.