* Photo: Robyn Twomey * After a magnitude-7.9 earthquake rocked eastern Sichuan province last May, the Chinese government stiff-armed aid agencies at the border for a few days. So Ron Eguchi figured out a new way to quarterback relief efforts—from above.
Eguchi is CEO of ImageCat, a risk-management company that uses satellite imagery and computer modeling to assess the impact of natural disasters and terrorist attacks. In August, he repurposed his gadgetry into a sort of disaster-surveillance channel, using Virtual Earth to display the quake zone as a set of zoomable images. Then he recruited engineers and social scientists to decipher them. In just a few weeks, he had the beginnings of a map of all the landslides and razed buildings.
It couldn't provide immediate help in China: Governments are restricted from sharing sensitive data, especially hi-res pics like Eguchi's. But his work was noticed by the UN and several international aid groups. With their support, Eguchi plans to have a coordinated relief-mapping system ready for use by midyear. "This is the next-generation tool for communication between the public and emergency-response agencies," he says. "It's about getting the right information to the right people at the right time."
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