It has, so far, been a peaceful hurricane season within the state of Florida. But any resident of the Southeast will inform you that the deeper into summer season we go, the extra harmful it turns into.
There’s no stopping Mom Nature’s wrath, however a Florida-based tech firm has give you a method to assist state officers start restoration efforts after a storm blows by way of. The know-how might finally be used for different pure disasters, such because the latest flash floods in Texas Hill Nation and the devastating fires in California.
Final fall, City SDK, a Jacksonville, Florida-based software program firm that aggregates visitors information to assist public works departments spot issues extra simply, launched HALO—a brand new service that shortly highlights probably the most urgent drawback areas after a storm passes.
As quickly as winds drop beneath 40 mph and the solar is out, the corporate duties satellites and deploys helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing plane to collect aerial imagery of the storm’s affect. These photos are processed by way of its pc imaginative and prescient mannequin, serving to state and native officers establish areas the place roads are blocked by fallen timber, flooding, or extreme injury.
“Our first precedence is to get the roads again to operational. The purpose is to have eyes on—in clear visibility—an important impacted space inside 24 hours,” says Drew Messer, CEO of City SDK. “What we try to [offer] is a centralized platform for that info.”
The imagery HALO captures additionally serves as formal proof for state officers when requesting FEMA reimbursements for cleanup efforts.
Whereas City SDK at present works with 34 states and greater than 250 native governments in its main enterprise, HALO is at present solely utilized in Florida. The 2024 hurricane season marked its first deployment, however as 2025 progresses, City SDK plans to supply the service in different states.
Proper now, HALO is a software that’s hurricane-specific. (The identify, by the way in which, stands for Hurricane Evaluation, Logistics, and Operations.) In the end, although, Messer says the corporate hopes to adapt the service for a broader vary of emergency occasions.
There’s a rising want for that form of flexibility. The latest Texas floods left greater than 130 lifeless and prompted an estimated $18 billion to $22 billion in damages and financial loss. Final yr, Asheville, North Carolina, suffered at the very least $53 billion in damages and noticed at the very least 42 fatalities after Hurricane Helene stalled over the town.
Scientists warn that extra floods are seemingly. Hotter air holds extra moisture, and mixed with getting older infrastructure and price range cuts to the Nationwide Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), storms—whether or not tropical or in any other case—have gotten extra harmful.
That would make instruments like HALO more and more priceless for search-and-rescue efforts in addition to for financial restoration.
Wanting forward, the know-how might additionally show helpful within the days earlier than a storm or catastrophe hits, by figuring out weak areas and offering simulated assessments of potential affect. This might assist authorities implement preventive responses.
“There’s a chance now the place we are able to coordinate a complete of presidency strategy to those points . . . and permit the disparate techniques to be coordinated and joined collectively so people could make higher operational choices primarily based on actually related info,” Messer says.
That’s nonetheless sooner or later. For now, HALO stays centered on hurricanes, and City SDK is making ready to develop the software’s attain past Florida. With forecasters predicting a higher-than-usual variety of named storms this yr (together with six to 10 hurricanes and three to 5 main hurricanes), HALO might have loads of work forward.
