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Massive flooding has devastated the Kerala state of India. Monsoons hit the area on May 28th and a second round started on August 8th. At least 164 people have been killed and over 223,000 have been displaced from their homes and are living in 1,500 relief camps. Kerala has seen 40% more rainfall than normal since June, which has triggered landslides in multiple districts. Kochi airport has been shut down because runways are submerged. The closure is expected to remain in place until at least August 26th. In most hospitals, staffing has been reduced while bed occupancy has increased 80-90%. Area hospitals face two other major crises: a lack of proper medical supplies and fuel to run generators. Locals have taken to social media to create crowd-sourced maps of trouble spots to coordinate relief material checkpoints.

When crises like this occur, DigitalGlobe is committed to supporting the humanitarian community and fulfilling Maxar’s purpose of Building a Better World by providing critical and actionable information to assist response efforts. As part of our Open Data Program, DigitalGlobe will publicly release pre- and post-event imagery of the affected areas to support disaster response.

Pre-event DigitalGlobe imagery has been uploaded to the Open Data site. Please continue to check the site for updates on post-event imagery.

We will continue to update this blog post and our social media feeds as more data becomes available.

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WorldView-3 pre-event image of Kochi, Kerala State, India.[/caption]

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