MCEER Joins Multi-lateral Reconnaissance Team to Investigate the Effects of the Tsunami/Earthquake Disaster in South Asia

Ranked as one of the more catastrophic events in recent times, the Indonesian earthquake and subsequent tsunami has caused significant damage in 11 countries and resulted in over 150,000 people killed. Countless others are without housing and basic lifeline services.

MCEER has joined a Thailand-Japanese Team of engineers who will be visiting hard hit areas in Thailand in early January 2005. The team will be led by Professor Fumio Yamazaki of Chiba University in Chiba, Japan and Dr. Pennung Warnitchai of the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. Shubharoop Ghosh of ImageCat, Inc. will be representing MCEER in this field investigation. He will be deploying the VIEWS (Visualizing the Impacts of Earthquakes With Satellites) system to record, document and analyze field data that is collected during this investigation. VIEWS is a notebook-based system, which integrates GPS-registered digital video footage, digital photographs and observations with high-resolution satellite images of a disaster. VIEWS was used in reconnaissance work after the 2003 Bam, Iran earthquake, the hurricanes that hit the Florida coast in late 2004, and the Niigata, Japan earthquake in October 2004. VIEWS is being developed with funding from MCEER. Click here for the MCEER Response to Hurricane Charley.

MCEER Reconnaissance Investigation

• MCEER Response: Post-Tsunami Urban Damage Survey in Thailand Using the VIEWS® Reconnaissance System (pdf 2.3 mb)
• Preliminary Field Report: Post-Tsunami Urban Damage Survey in Thailand, Using the VIEWS Reconnaissance System

Additional Links:

• National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), U.S. Geological Survey

• MCEER Literature Search

• MCEER Reconnaissance Materials from Previous Earthquakes