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NGA in History - Defining Moments

Super Typhoon Haiyan

On Nov. 8, 2013, Super Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines and became the region’s deadliest typhoon on record, killing over 6,000 people and causing billions of dollars in damages. According to an estimate by the United Nations, a total of 11 million people were affected by the tropical cyclone.

In response to Haiyan – known as Yolanda in the Philippines – the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency provided analysis and damage assessments to the combined U.S. government response, the Philippines government and international aid organizations.

In support of U.S. Pacific Command, which is assisting the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, NGA established a special focus cell within 24 hours to work virtually and begin leveraging a full range of geospatial intelligence sources, including commercial satellites; airborne platforms and geospatial open source information.

NGA produced and provided more than 100 unclassified imagery and analysis products to the All Partners Access Network, a community-wide portal to aid in the massive response. NGA requested the temporary release of imagery for Typhoon Haiyan with commercial vendor and partner, DigitalGlobe. As a result, DigitalGlobe established specialized accounts on an expanded cloud services platform to enable access to Typhoon Haiyan-related imagery.

Associated Document(s)