Engineering and Organizational Issues Related to The World Trade Center Terrorist Attack. Volume 3: Emergency Response in the Wake of the World Trade Center Attack: The Remote Sensing Perspective

摘要

A combination of factors culminated in a breakthrough for remote sensing technology in emergency management, following the events of September 11th. First, the World Trade Center attack is an event unparalleled in history. The devastation was beyond the imaginative capabilities of emergency management professionals - there was simply no appropriate script for such an event. The demand for information proved to be immense. Second, Manhattan is unique in the United States because of the density of high-rise buildings and the value of real estate. Because of this, and the logistical needs that follow, the City of New York had already undertaken intense mapping efforts, resulting in the production of highly accurate vector and raster databases. Third, even though this was a very large disaster, the scale of events in New York was highly localized, with primary impacts concentrated in a small geographic area. The need to coordinate the response for an event of this magnitude, in a dense yet relatively small area, made the combination of imagery and data maps particularly useful.