TakiWaehere – New Zealand Geospatial Hackathon

With three friends, we took part in the TakiWaehere - New Zealand Geospatial Hackathon over the weekend of 17-18 April 2021.

We chose the topic “managing emergencies”. We were provided with four high-resolution satellite images from Maxar. One image was taken before the event, two just after, and the latest three years later. We applied the Augmented Normalized Difference Water Index (ANDWI) to detect locations where flooding had occurred. We overlaid the flooded extent on top of the built environment data (buildings, roads, power lines). Using a GIS software, we were then able to tell which buildings and roads were critically affected by the flood. We presented the final output in an interactive map Web App (map).

This map can be used by emergency response teams to locate people that are potentially trapped or to find damaged power poles that could cause a power outage. The affected community can use the hazard map to find the roads that are still accessible. The application is simple and can be used for any region in New Zealand. With the addition of Worldview Legion and other satellites, this data could be updated each hour or faster.

For the full details check our StoryMaps.