Grad student adds drone imagery to toolbox for post-disaster recovery
A
new online gallery of photos taken in the days, weeks and months following the March 2020 regional tornados is the work of an engineering graduate student who wants to make disaster recovery more equitable. Daniel Perrucci, a Ph.D. candidate in
civil engineering, used bird’s eye imagery from drones as well as street-level photography to document pockets of recovery in East Nashville and Mount Juliet, which is about 17 miles of the city. The storms were of the same strength, caused similar damage and the same number of fatalities in each area. Perrucci’s early comparisons produced one clear trend. The urban area appeared to recover more quickly during the initial relief stages than the rural/suburban one, as gauged by debris piles, blue tarps over roofs and other observations.
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