Tainan, Taiwan, March 16th, 2011

Prof. Cheng-Chien Liu from the Department of Earth Sciences at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Tainan, Taiwan, has processed and distributed Formosat-2 images of Japan collected prior and after the recent Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster, using his Formosat-2 Automatic Image Processing System (F-2 AIPS).

On the night of March 11th, Prof. Liu and his colleagues from NCKU Global Earth Observation and Data Analysis Center (GEODAC) processed images of Sendai that were acquired before the crisis.

On the 12th, they finished processing the first image of Sendai taken after the earthquake in 2 hours and uploaded it to Global Environment Monitoring and Disaster Assessment System (GEMDAS).

On March 13th and 14th, the team continued to publish the latest images on GEMDAS, including Chiba refinery fire, Sendai flood, Sendai Airport, Matsushima Airbase, Minamisanriku town, Kesennuma fire and Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant.

After Prof. Liu processed over 30GB data and published all images on GEMDAS, this website has attracted 30,000 users in 3 hours and more than 60,000 people within 24 hours.

In addition, L'Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Reuters, NASA Earth Observatory and Google Crisis Response Team have asked Prof. Liu to share the data with the world.