Disaster response

Geospatial intelligence for flood and bushfire response

Published · Updated · 7 min read · Mapizy Insights Team

Landscape used for flood and bushfire change assessment

Effective claims and community response depend on knowing what a property looked like before an event, and what changed after, without inspecting every image by hand.

Mapizy’s insurance workflow includes instant access to pre- and post-event analytics for damage assessment. Building-footprint change detection is explicitly positioned for bushfire and flooding. Portfolio tools also track bushfire-related context such as distance to bushland, tree overhang, and proximity to water bodies. Mapizy’s company history notes elevation-data work for flood modelling in coastal areas, awarded during the Deloitte Global Gravity Challenge.

Key takeaways

Before

Baseline attributes

Roof condition, vegetation, and footprint state from current imagery become the reference for later comparison.

After

Change maps

Post-event imagery is compared with the baseline so damaged buildings can be flagged as change rather than found only by scrolling photos.

Exposure

Context layers

Distance to bushland, tree overhang, and closeness to water bodies are example risk filters already described for portfolio monitoring.

Aim

Faster claims

The published claims workflow is to respond fast and improve customer experience by reducing manual image inspection.

Methodology

1

Hold a current baseline

Keep parcel attributes and footprints on a regular update cycle so the pre-event view is not years out of date.

2

Acquire post-event imagery

Bring in the next available aerial or satellite pass after flood or fire and run the same detection stack.

3

Publish a change view

Give claims and emergency users a map of what changed, plus the original attributes needed to interpret damage.

Illustrative pre and post event comparison Two panels labelled before and after an event, with a highlighted changed building. Pre-event Post-event Illustrative change highlight. It does not represent a measured loss ratio.
Conceptual pre/post comparison for disaster assessment. This graphic is illustrative.

Practical applications

Insurers can use the same stack described on the insurance page for claims. Government users can combine land-cover and building-change layers after an event. Related reading: property risk, urban change, and the building-change use case.

Sources and limitations

This report restates Mapizy’s published claims-management, change-detection, and flood-modelling work. It does not estimate lives saved, dollar losses, or model accuracy. Post-event imagery may be delayed by smoke, cloud, or tasking. Diagrams are conceptual.

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