This just in from a contact at MSN:
I wanted to pass along information regarding work we did with our partner Pictometry to capture areas damaged by Hurricane Katrina. After talking with the people on the ground supporting relief efforts, it became apparent that the lack of information about the status of homes and buildings was hampering relief efforts. Getting new images of the area and displaying them alongside pictures of the area before the hurricane — will give evacuees the opportunity to view the damage to their homes and property and give local agencies an easier way to determine which areas were hardest hit so they can prioritize cleanup. We also hope this will also assist insurers and agencies in verifying claims in determining which areas were hardest hit so they can prioritize cleanup.
Planes were in the air over the last week capturing aerial imagery of more than 12,000 miles of coastline and inland areas damaged by Katrina. These images were provided to all, both those on the ground managing cleanup as well as victims of the disaster, displaying the damaged regions with two-foot visual acuity pictures and a street grid overlay; information that is vital with so many visual landmarks destroyed.
This site launched at 3pm today and can be viewed here. Note: There may be some slight discrepancies as we uploaded the images as we received them so they could be used immediately.
Full link is: http://msnbc.msn.com/apps/ve/katrina.htm?a=1/
This is very cool, but not entirely Firefox-compatible yet (I attribute this purely to the rush to get it up, not to any innate hostility to Firefox as the Virtual Earth site works just fine in Firefox). It shows the value of public-facing mapping tools–less specialized but more accessible than traditional GIS tools.
It’s interesting to compare MSN’s imagery with Google’s (which I covered as part of last week’s roundup. Google can get satellites into place quicker, but MSN’s more detailed and better-angled photography seems more useful because of the detail and visible building facades. MSN’s is more expensive to collect, though, which is why Virtual Earth is still Virtual USA and the pictometry only covers Seattle as far as I can see.