2022 Hurricane Ian
In response to Hurricane Ian, a high-end Category 4 hurricane that became the third-costliest weather disaster on record and the deadliest hurricane to hit Florida since 1935, the RAPID facility sent out multiple deployments of equipment and staff.
RAPID supported six data reconnaissance projects in response to Hurricane Ian. Just before the hurricane made landfall, Andrew Lyda and Jaqueline Zdebski were mobilized for a pre-hurricane deployment of RTK drones to support the NEER “Sentinel” prototype tower project. Following the hurricane, Zdebski traveled to the Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel Island areas to conduct UAS surveys as part of the StEER reconnaissance team. Working with Quantum Systems, the manufacturer of the Trinity F90+ VTOL UAS, and the distributor, Frontier Precision, Zdebski utilized their new Oblique D2M camera to collect 250K high-resolution images to document the areas hardest hit by the hurricane’s storm surge. Additionally, RAPID sent the Altum multispectral camera and RTC360 laser scanner to support successive data collection deployment by GEER, NEER, and two projects through SuMMEER.
