Deep Learning for Disaster Recovery – Insight Data

With global climate change, devastating hurricanes are occurring with higher frequency. After a hurricane, roads are often flooded or washed out, making them treacherous for motorists. According to The Weather Channel, almost two of every three U.S. flash flood deaths from 1995–2010, excluding fatalities from Hurricane Katrina, occurred in vehicles. During my Insight A.I. Fellowship, I designed a system that detects flooded roads and created an interactive map app. Using state of the art computer vision deep learning methods, the system automatically annotates flooded, washed out, or otherwise severely damaged roads from satellite imagery.