Providing Open Mapping Data to Help Responders After the Beirut, Lebanon Explosion

On August 4th, 2020, a major explosion devastated the city of Beirut, Lebanon. The cause of the explosion, as cited from the Prime Minister, was 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, a common chemical compound used in fertilizer and a component in mining explosives. As of August 7, at least 150 people have been killed and more than 5,000 people injured; another 300,000+ people have been displaced by the explosion. It is estimated that the explosion has caused as much as $5 billion in damage.

Ecopia.AI, in partnership with Maxar Technologies, has mapped a 1-kilometre radius surrounding the point of the explosion to support response efforts. To conduct this effort, Maxar Technologies first captured new high-resolution satellite imagery of the region and pulled pre-explosion imagery from its 110-petabyte archive. Ecopia then leveraged the pre-event imagery as an input into our proprietary artificial intelligence-based systems to rapidly generate highly accurate vector maps of the region: 2.5D building footprints and road centrelines.

August 17, 2020 Update:
Ecopia.AI, in partnership with Maxar Technologies, has generated 2D building footprints within a 10-kilometre radius surrounding the point of explosion. The dataset includes 70,613 building footprints.

To support first responder workflows with organizations like the Red Cross and other non-profits, Ecopia and Maxar are making the imagery and vector maps available under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commerical 4.0 license. The data can be downloaded via Maxar’s Open Data Program.