Oblique Aerial Imagery for Public Safety: 5 Real-World Use Cases
Public safety personnel—from first responders to 911 dispatchers to emergency management directors—play a crucial role in keeping our cities and counties safe.
Many of these agencies rely on EagleView oblique aerial imagery to direct emergency responders, aid with law enforcement missions, and help public safety and emergency management teams plan for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
EagleView oblique imagery solutions provide critical tools for critical moments. Here are just a few of the ways that EagleView helps augment government organizations’ existing workflows and ensure the safety of their communities.
1. Helping locate 911 callers.
Oblique aerial imagery saves critical time during emergencies, providing dispatchers with the intelligence they need to quickly understand the situation on the ground, accurately identify building access points, direct emergency personnel, and communicate essential details to first responders.
EagleView augments your existing workflows, integrates with leading Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) tools, and gives dispatchers the geographic intelligence and visual context they need to quickly pinpoint a caller’s location. Dispatchers can ask questions like “Do you see this landmark? Do you see this sign? Which building entrance are you closest to?” and then relay that information to first responders.
EagleView’s oblique aerial imagery integrates with leading platforms, including:
- Esri® ArcGIS solutions
- Autodesk®
- E 9-1-1 CAD systems
2. Planning safer law enforcement missions.
Public safety teams respond to situations at all hours and in all conditions. Access to accurate and timely location information is crucial for ensuring the safety of both law enforcement and the public.
City and county law enforcement use EagleView imagery to conduct site reviews when planning for SWAT raids, serving warrants, and identifying surveillance and staging areas.
EagleView’s oblique imagery turns night into day, allowing teams to:
- Visualize and inspect a site in daylight and in ideal weather conditions
- View buildings from any angle
- Determine lines of sight
- Identify points of ingress and egress
- Make better strategic and tactical response decisions
- Identify potential threats, soft targets, vulnerabilities, and hazards that may not otherwise be visible to the eye
3. Rapidly assessing remote damage following natural disasters.
EagleView is the only company to deliver critical pre- and post-event imagery when public safety, emergency management, GIS, and other government agencies need it most.
EagleView’s high-resolution oblique imagery and analytical tools have been used in more than 50 natural disasters and other catastrophic events. Imagery captured in the immediate aftermath of a disaster can be critical to helping communities assess damage quickly and safely, and is important when applying for recovery assistance from state and federal aid programs.
With remote damage assessments, teams can review disaster imagery from any desktop, tablet, or mobile device, and analyze areas that aren’t yet accessible by ground to identify the number of properties impacted and the severity of damage. These metrics can quickly be reported to other government agencies to expedite aid, and are also an important reference point for homeowners and business owners when filing insurance claims after an event.
EagleView’s RapidAccess Disaster Response Program (DRP) provides disaster coverage imagery—at no additional charge—of up to 200 contiguous square miles of affected areas upon the occurrence of:
- Hurricanes Category II and higher
- Tornados rated EF4 and higher
- Damage from terrorist attack
- Earthquakes 6.0 or higher on the Richter scale
- Tsunamis resulting in damage to critical infrastructure
4. Planning and preparing for disasters.
With access to EagleView’s extensive imagery database, government departments can look at both recent and historical imagery to identify risks for flooding, inclement weather incidents, wildfires, and other potential hazards.
They can track and monitor high-risk areas and use additional visualization tools like 3D Mesh Layers to assess land slope and drainage conditions, and conduct floodplain analysis. Using the elevation data provided by oblique imagery helps anticipate the flow of water and material during a flooding incident—information that’s critical for public safety and disaster response, including planning the number of sandbags needed in specific locations, as well as anticipating which roads may be flooded and then planning alternative evacuation routes.
Tools like Near Infrared can also help government departments visualize vegetation density and condition, which is important for areas at risk for wildfires.
5. Identifying locations for public safety services.
Through collaboration with county tax assessors, planning and zoning, public works, and other departments, public safety teams can track local growth and development to better plan for police and fire locations in order to best serve the community.
To learn more about how EagleView can help public safety teams keep their communities safe and secure, visit www.eagleview.com/government.
