Brandenburg / Havel, Germany – RapidEye, the only geospatial solutions provider to own and operate a constellation of five identical Earth Observation satellites, announced that they have used their own before and after imagery of the city of Concepción, Chile to record the changes that were caused by the February 27th earthquake. Concepción was hit the hardest and was the most affected area in the region hit by the 8.8 magnitude quake.

The analysis clearly shows the affected areas at quite a high level of detail. They are based on images taken around one month before the earthquake (January 22nd, 2010) and images taken on Saturday, February 27th, 2010 at around 11:00 a.m. local time, only hours after the earthquake hit the area at 3:34 a.m. local time. The evaluations depict changes to buildings in the airport area, landslides in forested areas, intrusions of water into urban areas and can be used to support the humanitarian aid community in their efforts.  

“We are pleased to be able to demonstrate how RapidEye can quickly analyze a series of before and after  images, which spotlights our system's unique repetitive capabilities and the excellence of our analytical team” says Dr. Frederik Jung-Rothenhaeusler, Head of Product Development. “This is not only an application that can be used in the security and emergency sector, there are numerous fields for which this analysis is extremely useful.”

For more information about RapidEye's change detection services of the area affected by the earthquake and the following Tsunami, please visit the company's website at www.rapideye.de/chile_change. More information on RapidEye Products and Services can be found at www.rapideye.de.

RapidEye has made these images available for editorial use at www.rapideye.de/home/news/press-area. They may be published for editorial use only, in hard copy, electronic or in broadcast format, provided that credit is provided to “RapidEye” on all such products.

On Monday March 1st, the company had announced that a set of satellite imagery of the affected region had been made available at no cost to governmental and non governmental help organizations and institutions in need of the most current Earth Observation information available for this region. If your organization is involved in emergency efforts for this devastating event, please contact sales@rapideye.de. Additionally, RapidEye has made the imagery available for purchase on the Geodata Kiosk at www.geodatakiosk.com. General inquiries for the imagery can be sent to sales@rapideye.de.