The prevalence of natural disasters, such as fires, droughts, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes, is increasing due to the rapidly changing climate. Climate change can lead to a rise in the risk of extreme weather and can further result in the increased risk of droughts and strength of storms, including tropical cyclones. Almost every part of the world is affected by natural disasters, and a total of 409 natural disasters occurred across the globe in 2019. Furthermore, in the same year, approximately 11,000 fatalities were caused by natural disaster events worldwide.
Attributed to this rising prevalence of natural disasters, the governments of different countries are focusing toward the usage of new imagery solutions, such as aerial imagery, for determining the actual loss of life and property. The aerial imagery technology is extensively being preferred for updating the map information after a disaster occurs, since it provides high resolution images which are easy to understand for disaster management teams. The technology has the ability to monitor and assess potential damage from calamities, thereby enabling disaster management authorities to take corrective measures. It is because of such abilities of aerial imagery that the aerial imagery market is projected to advance at a considerable pace in the coming years.
Aerial imagery has a number of applications in addition to disaster management, namely construction and development, surveillance and monitoring, exhibition and live entertainment, geospatial, conservation and research, and energy and resource management. Different types of aerial imagery are high oblique, low oblique, and vertical. The demand for high oblique aerial imagery is expected to grow significantly in the coming years, which is attributed to the growing requirement from the defense & government industries for high oblique aerial photography. This type of photography serves a number of purposes such as guiding pilots towards a landing site or photographic target.
Different industries which make use of aerial imagery are civil engineering and archeology, government, media and entertainment, energy and mining, agriculture and forestry, and defense. Among these, the government sector has been making wide usage of aerial imagery because of the development of smart cities and rising concerns for homeland security and for town planning, energy sector exploration, and monitoring and management of environmental changes. Other than this, the adoption of the technology is rising in the defense sector due to the growing crime rate and increase in advanced defense technologies.
When geography is taken into consideration, North America has been the largest aerial imagery market in the past, which is ascribed to the growing utilization of this technology for mapping sky rise buildings, oil & gas plants, dams in the region. The swift urbanization and investments in smart cities in the region are further projected to result in the growing demand for aerial imagery in the coming years. The utilization of this technology is also predicted to rise substantially in the Asia-Pacific region in the near future due to the increasing need for surveillance and monitoring to combat national and international threats.
Hence, the demand for aerial imagery is rising because of the growing need for monitoring threats and for disaster management applications.
