Within 12 hours of the bushfire starting, two satellites were making regular passes over the area and providing detailed photographs of the fire ground.
Maps were then interlaced with layers of information from the photographs to provide interested agencies with up-to-date details.
Staff could not safely travel through the area until days later, explained manager Gary Maguire from the Department for Communities and Social Inclusion (DCSI).
“We have been looking at all data sets that have been spread across government and also some parts of non-for-profit and bringing it [all] together,” Mr Maguire said.
Global crowd sourcing volunteers help find damaged buildings
More than 3,500 “geo-geeks” from around the world logged on to a layer of the map created by Tomnod to begin marking items thought to be remnants of assets.
Volunteers were able to match a pre-fire map with the latest satellite images and determine areas where buildings had been destroyed or badly damaged.
