GEOEYE

This one-meter ground resolution satellite image shows a portion of Risalpur, located on the Kabul River in the Nowshera District in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province about 45 km from Peshawar. The image was taken on Aug. 6, 2009, almost one year before Risalpur experienced historic flooding in late July and early August 2010. This image could be used by humanitarian agencies and first responders to plan post-flooding relief and evacuation activities by comparing "before" imagery to detect changes to the landscape and infrastructure. The IKONOS satellite took this image from 423 miles in space as it moved from north to south over Pakistan at a speed of four miles per second.

GEOEYE

This half-meter ground resolution satellite image shows a portion of Risalpur, located on the Kabul River in the Nowshera District in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province about 45 km from Peshawar. The image was collected on Aug. 5, 2010 after Risalpur experienced historic flooding and shows the coastline and town covered in mud and water. According to news reports, this area of Pakistan hasn't seen such flooding since 1929. The floods have collectively killed an estimated 1,500 people in Pakistan, affected 4.2 million people and displaced millions from their homes. The GeoEye-1 satellite took this image from 423 miles in space as it moved from north to south over Pakistan at a speed of four miles per second.

GEOEYE

Detail of 2009 shot above.

GEOEYE

Similar detail from 2010 shot above.

DigitalGlobe

On the left is a satellite image of Nowshera, Pakistan and the surrounding area before it was flooded. The image on the right shows the same area on August 5, after the deluge.

Pakistan floods: Before and after from outer space

Though dated as early as 2007 and as only as recently as August 5, 2010, these are new to us.

This is a new perspective on the tragedy we've been seeing largely through pictures from the ground.

Sorry I couldn't get perfect crop alignment on the tight shots from GEOEYE, the third and fourth pictures in this post--I'm working on a laptop in a conference center in Redmond, WA, missing my 30" monitor, and wanted to get this out quickly instead of perfectly.

Editor's note: There was an error due to haste in the picture credits as well. As originally posted, the GEOEYE pictures were incorrectly credited to DigitalGlobe. That has been corrected. For more information, see the GEOEYE site here. See more pictures from DigitalGlobe here.

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