Disaster Object Detection and Damage Assessment

In the aftermath of a large-scale disaster, it is important to assess the impacted area to identify damaged infrastructure such as roads, buildings, power lines. Social media can play an important role in current-day disaster management. Images shared from the disaster areas may include objects relevant to various response operations. If these objects are identified correctly, they can offer a preliminary damage assessment report and situational awareness for response and recovery. This research, in collaboration with a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), aims to develop state-of-the-art object detection models capable of detecting objects in multi-hazard disaster scenes posted on social media.