A comprehensive atlas of all damage caused in Haiti by the magnitude 7.0 earthquake on 12 January 2010 is now available to help planning recovery and reconstruction measures. The atlas, based on the comparison between pre-disaster satellite imagery and post-disaster aerial photos, provides an overview of building damage in the main affected cities in Haiti showing that almost 60,000 buildings were either destroyed or very heavily damaged.
Residential buildings and buildings in slums bore the worst damage, particularly in Port-Au-Prince, Carrefour, Delmas and Leogane communes. The damage is now assessed to be ten times higher than first estimates given immediately after the event, which can be attributed to the availability of better resolution airborne data.