APSU GIS Center helps develop Damage Assessment application
May 27, 2010
The building, like so many homes and businesses in middle Tennessee, was a pale brown from where the floodwaters covered it. Mike Wilson, manager of Austin Peay State University’s Geographic Information Systems, stood among the tree limbs and other debris in the Woodlawn community and pulled out his cell phone.
He wasn’t making a call. He was filling out a damage assessment of the property and filing it to an electronic server. It took him only a few minutes to complete. For years, the long, drawn-out process of recording the destruction inflicted by a disaster has sometimes taken days or weeks, delaying the time it takes for needed aid to reach an area, but a new cell phone application, developed by the APSU GIS Center and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, may soon allow emergency responders to document immediately any damage they come across. [Read more]
