On November 8, 2018, a spark from a P&G power line set off Camp Fire in Butte County, California, which burned for 17 days, forcing 52,000 people to evacuate, covering 153,336 acres, and resulting in 85 civilian deaths. Two years later, towns are still rebuilding.
At the beginning of 2020, Disaster Tech was approached by the Red Cross to create a proof of concept that could track the progress of the rebuilding process. With FEMA beginning to pull out and federal dollars slowing, response organizations needed to know what assistance was still required and where.
Utilizing machine learning algorithms, the Disaster Tech team determined which structures had been destroyed and then overlaid that information with property value change in 2019. The resulting data demonstrated that most homes had yet to be rebuilt, meaning thousands were still displaced. The DICE platform was able to determine this information in a fraction of the time than it had previously taken, and the automation of the previously manual task provided significant cost-savings.
