This story was originally published in our May/June 2022 issue as "Ahead of the Storm." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
After the 2004 tsunami struck India, then-14-year-old Rohini Sampoornam Swaminathan visited several affected villages with her father.
She noticed a deafening silence and a sense of hopelessness in areas once abuzz with fishing activity. People had lost their homes and loved ones. Fishing boats, the sole income source for many, had washed away or been completely destroyed. And she met a man who pointed to a mass grave containing hundreds of people — he told her there wasn’t enough time to dig individual plots.
Still mulling over the devastation, she huddled inside an internet café to find out why natural disasters happen. She stumbled upon geoinformatics, the science of mapping and remote sensing, and learned how it can help communities prepare for life-threatening disasters.
