NASA releases map of areas damaged by 'Yolanda'

MANILA, Philippines - The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has generated a map showing the areas most devastated by Super Typhoon "Yolanda" to help rescue and relief workers focus their operations.

The space-based map created by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, covers the portion of Leyte island near Tacloban City, the area hardest hit by the typhoon when it made landfall on November 8.

(View the full-resolution map on the NASA JPL website)

The 43-by-53-kilometer map was made from radar imagery obtained before and after Yolanda hit land, the JPL said on its website.

"It was processed by JPL's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) team using X-band interferometric synthetic aperture radar data from the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed satellite constellation," the JPL explained.

The JPL said this technique uses a prototype algorithm to detect surface caused by natural or man-made damage.

In the map, the JPL said the damage detected by radar is shown as an overlay on a Google Earth image.

"Areas in red reflect the heaviest damage to cities and towns in the storm's path. The estimated intensity of damage is proportional to the opacity of the red," the JPL said.

If areas have little to no destruction, then their image pixels are transparent.

NASA said it is making the map publicly available for agencies that might be responding to the the devastation wrought by Yolanda, the strongest typhoon to hit Philippines this year and considered as among the most powerful ever recorded.

The Philippine government has been criticized for its alleged slow response and relief efforts for the millions affected by the calamity in Eastern Samar.