The eastern side of the USA, which is the target of tropical cyclones and storms at least once a year, is constantly busy with healing its wounds economically and psychologically. Undoubtedly, Florida is one of the places most damaged by these hurricanes on the east side.
This being the case, many charities also rolled up their sleeves to help hurricane victims in Florida. One of these charities, GiveDirectly, uses a rather unusual system to identify hurricane victims.
Thanks to Google’s satellites, victims are detected.
GiveDirectly, in collaboration with the US Agency for International Development and Google, announced that they will use Google’s live satellite imagery to identify victims in Florida, which was devastated by Hurricane Ian last month. Explaining that they aim to reach citizens in the regions hit hardest by the hurricane using instant data on satellite images, the officials stated that they used the same system during the pandemic period. The organization, which helped millions of citizens thanks to Google’s satellite system in the West African country Togo, where deaths from hunger began due to the economic crisis after the pandemic, announced that a more advanced system would be used in Florida.
According to the news of Arstechnica, Google has appointed 4 machine learning experts specifically for the development of this satellite system. These experts want to combine the company’s satellite system with the artificial intelligence they have developed to ensure that victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters can be easily detected from satellite. In this way, the situation of natural disaster victims anywhere in the world will be observed and adequate assistance will be provided to these victims.
In a statement, GiveDirectly manager Sarah Moran stated that they started to use the system gradually, and they sent notifications to users in Florida for these aids via Google. Stating that they sent notifications to 700 users whose smartphones were active, but only 200 users accepted the request for help, Moran stated that the system they used would radically change their “Aid after natural disaster” systems in the near future.
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