Throughout the world, commercial enterprises, individuals and govern-ments are pitching in to aid those who have survived the devastating tsunamis that took the lives of more than 180,000 people on Dec. 26. The satellite industry is no exception.

In fact, the full magnitude of the damage caused can be seen on the images being supplied by the many remote sensing satellites, both commercial and military, that are currently in orbit. Those same images also are playing a vital role in the relief effort, as are other satellite technologies such as Iridium‘s mobile satellite communications services.

Images from satellites such as DigitalGlobe‘s Quickbird spacecraft satellite are “being used in a lot of different ways” to aid relief workers, Chuck Herring, spokesman for DigitalGlobe told Satellite News. “One is through the media and their ability to illustrate the magnitude of the destruction and illustrate their stories.”

And while the satellite pictures may be helping the media tell their stories in ways no words could quite capture, the images also are being used on the ground to help get aid to those who need it.

“Being able to get updated satellite images so [aid workers] can understand new routes [into affected areas], what roads, what infrastructure’s been damaged [so aid workers] can quickly discern the best possible routes in” is a vital part of the relief effort, Herring said. “You are hearing that again and again on news reports and we’re seeing it in the imagery that much of the infrastructure, especially in the heavily damaged areas, is gone. The maps many of the agencies have and rely upon to get in and out are pretty much out of date as of a little more than a week ago. So getting updates to their maps is very important.”

DigitalGlobe is not the only one satellite imaging company contributing its satellite-generated photos to the relief effort.

“We are very busy,” Gary Napier, public relations manager from Space Imaging Inc. told Satellite News. “Ikonos (the company’s imaging satellite) is being very heavily tasked every time it goes over that region. About two days ago, we were at 27,000 square kilometers since the disaster happened. In just about a one-week period, that translates to about 10,500 square miles of imagery that we have taken mostly of coastal shorelines.”

Napier noted that Space Imaging is able to revisit the entire area about once every three days to get an updated picture of what progress is being made to restore the area.

And Space Imaging is doing what it can to get those images in the hands of those who need them most.

“We’ve relaxed our distribution license completely on this imagery,” Napier noted. “Normally with all of our imagery, when someone buys it, there is a license of how much they can distribute it. It is usually within one or two organization levels. Now when anyone like the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) or the State Department or anyone that buys the imagery, we have allowed them to openly share the imagery [of the tsunami-affected area] after they’ve purchased it, which is a big help for them. They don’t have to come back to us for another license to go to another agency and slow things down.”

DigitalGlobe too is finding ways to get its images out to those who need it most and is making the determination on a case-by-case basis as to who receives donated images and who would still need to pay for them.

The obvious source for free distribution “is putting the JPEGs out on our Web site,” Herring said. “Those are free and we are available to laymen, the media, educators, universities and researchers.” (Space Imaging also has free satellite photos available on its Web site.) “For the relief workers, for a lot of our business partners, it is a combination of selling imagery and donating imagery depending on their needs and how quickly they need it turned around. A lot of them right now aren’t in a position where they can deal with any type of financial arrangement. We are just focused more on getting them imagery and less on making a huge profit off of this.”

Orbimage Inc. [ORBM] said in a Jan. 3 press release that it too is contributing imaging resources to the relief effort and since Dec. 27, “it has been dedicating all of its available satellite imagery collection time over South Asia for the collection of high-resolution imagery of areas affected by the tsunamis.”

In that release, Orbimage CEO Matt O’Connell said, “To support the relief efforts of the U.S. government and other international agencies, we’re doing our part by allocating every available orbit we have to collecting imagery over the damaged areas. Since the affected area is so large, satellite imagery is an important tool for evaluating, measuring and mapping the extent of the tsunamis’ destruction.” A call seeking comment on some of the more specific details on Orbimage’s contributions to the relief effort was not returned.

Finally, the U.S. government also is contributing satellite imagery. In a Dec. 30 news article from NBC News, NGA spokesman Stephen Honda said U.S. spy satellites also have been used to help coordinate relief efforts. The advantage of using military spy satellites is that they can detect items of about three to five inches in size, whereas commercial satellites generally detect items of about two to three feet in size.

Iridium Pitches In

Outside of the remote sensing industry, other satellite companies are contributing to the relief effort as well. One such company is Iridium.

And what is helping Iridium to become an effective tool for communicating in the areas hit by the tsunamis is its quick set-up time.

“The situation going on post-tsunami was kind of the ideal environment for Iridium to be there and to be there for some very specific purposes,” Carmen Lloyd, chairman and CEO of Iridium told Satellite News. “It’s really about helping people. We are helping to save lives in that territory today. We are helping connect people with families and friends that they may not have had any other means by which to connect. We are helping relief agencies gain access to the most up-to-date information and optimally coordinate rescue efforts.”

Lloyd noted that this is not the first time Iridium has been involved in disaster relief. Throughout the past three years, Iridium has helped out during disasters including the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York; the New York black out; the rash of hurricanes that swept through Florida this past summer; and currently following the earthquake in Taiwan.

But it is not just Iridium that is contributing.

“A number of our service providers in that territory are very active” in helping out, Lloyd noted. “A lot of our service providers have already deployed and activated close to 200, maybe 300 handsets in that territory. And what we saw in terms of actual traffic levels is a doubling of our activations in that territory after the tsunami hit and a doubling of our air time in that territory.”

Lloyd said that in some cases, services are being donated and in other cases, people are paying for service. One example, according to a press release from the company, is World Communications Center, which is offering free phones to assist national relief organizations.

Additionally, Lloyd said that separate from what the service providers are donating to the relief effort including “making a corporate decision to donate close to a half a million dollars worth of equipment, airtime and our own human resources that we are arranging through one of the relief organizations.”

Using Satellite For Early Warning

Whenever a disaster such as this occurs, questions will be asked as to what can be done to prevent such a disaster in the future. In terms of protecting property, not much could have stopped the tsunami. But in terms of saving lives, Iridium’s service can play a vital role.

“We already have in place tsunami early warning systems that are Iridium based,” Lloyd noted. “We are working with NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in the Pacific marine environment and have in place one Iridium-based tsunami warning systems that are out there to gauge wave heights” with 50 more ready to be deployed.

Unfortunately, there were no warning systems in the areas affected by the Dec. 26 tsunami, Lloyd noted. But that is not to say these warning systems won’t be deployed there and in other places in the future.

“These are real-time warnings of potential tsunamis. These can be deployed throughout the world fairly quickly and at low cost,” Loyd said, adding that a potential tsunami had been detected near Hawaii in November 2004. The system provided warning to the government. “As we start expandinig early-warning systems, the Iridium system is ideally suited” and could be rapidly deployed in a year to provide warnings of potential tsunamis.

–Gregory Twachtman (Chuck Herring, DigitalGlobe, 303/684-4020; Carmen Lloyd, Iridium, 480/752-5155; Gary Napier, Space Imaging, (303/254-2106)