NOAA Plans More Commercial Partnerships

Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are making plans to expand integration of aerial photography imagery with commercial services in an effort to help government agencies and insurance companies better assess damage from hurricanes, Federal Computer Weekly reported today. Last fall, the agency partnered with Google to adapt aerial photography of damaged coastlines into the company'’s Google Earth application following Hurricane Katrina.

The partnership allowed users to overlay the NOAA damage assessment imagery on the popular internet mapping service. A spokesman for NOAA said that the agency plans to expand such efforts in 2006. Such partnerhips could help insurance agencies evaluate claims through high-resolution photographs of damaged properties without ever going there.