Disaster management using edge-of-field computing and low-cost sensors
If there is something that has become much clearer in recent years with climate change, it’s that the magnitude and frequency of natural disasters has increased dramatically in the last 5 years. The Office of Management and Budget in the US Government conducted a preliminary analysis this year and concluded that six major types of natural disasters (coastal disasters, flooding, crop failures, climate-related health disasters, wildfires and building failures) “were likely to result in annual expenditures of approximately $134 billion and could result in as much as $2 trillion in lost revenue by the end of the century”. As a result, there’s been a lot of interest in technologies that can help responses in the aftermath of disasters as well as those that can help detect these disasters early and hence mitigate the damage from them. Recently, scientists from OakRidge National Laboratory helped develop a prototype system to detect damaged utility poles from hurricanes and other disas