ABOUT EARTHNUMERICS 

How it all began…

When I was 15, my neighborhood was flooded, and most of the people lost their belongings. My father was devastated and he took ill as a result of the stress that ensued. He never recovered, and a couple of years later, he passed away. Sadly, this was only one of the many events that devastated my neighborhood. Tales abound as to how similar events affected people all over the world and, in some cases, results in loss of life and homelessness. As a young boy, I was helpless; my only resolve was to work hard at school and hope that someday I could help my neighborhood.

EarthNumerics came as a result of several years of work and research in the application of surveying, mapping, and digital image processing. The aims of the works were to alleviate problems facing urban development through technology and anticipatory practices. The intensity and rates of natural disasters have increased due to climate change. This new reality requires anticipatory approaches and speedy responses when disasters occur. Cities need to find modern solutions to these new challenges.

Images from satellites and planes have been very useful for gathering information for anticipatory practices responding to these disasters and for responding to the disaster when they occur. However, they are sometimes untimely and cause delay. Drones, on the other hand, are easily deployed and are timely. They can be deployed days or hours before and after a disaster event. In addition, after a disaster event, people spent weeks and, in some cases, months manually assessing the level of damage in order to plan disaster response and recovery. This is valuable time needed to save lives and enable resilience.

EarthNumerics provides solutions to these problems by using drones to collect images for clients whenever they are needed. We also speed up the process of damage assessment by using deep learning, a field of Artificial Intelligence for feature extraction and damage classification.