ImageCat begins its Tenth Year as a Research Partner in the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research (MCEER)

Long Beach, CA – November 2006. For the Tenth year, ImageCat has been selected to be a research participant in the National Science Foundation part of MCEER. This participation will focus primarily on MCEER’s Program Three that deals with Response and Recovery Issues.

ImageCat is leading the effort to apply remote sensing technologies to post-earthquake damage detection and building inventory development. Using several different remote sensing platforms, we have successfully detected damage in a number of recent earthquakes (1999 Marmara, Turkey; 2003 Bam, Iran; 2003 Bourmedes, Algeria; 2004 Niigata, Japan earthquakes), after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and during the Hurricanes of 2004 (Katrina, Wilma and Rita).

In addition, the ImageCat research team has developed – in conjunction with researchers at Stanford University – techniques for creating 3D cities from high-resolution optical satellite images. As a first prototype, a detailed model of the City of London was created in 2006. For more information on the MCEER research program, please visit http://www.mceer.buffalo.edu.