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Henreitta, N.Y. – An engineering team from RIT has developed a sensor that takes aerial photos following natural disasters.

Not long after Tropical Storm Irene clobbered the area around Schenectady, RIT engineer Jason Faulring was flying overhead in a twin engine Piper Navajo.

He was operating a set of four cameras designed to pinpoint flooded areas.

Less than two hours after landing back in Rochester, Faulring was uploading the pictures for emergency responders in Schenectady.

“We can basically deploy our system and get our images back in a short amount of time, which is critical in disaster responding,” Faulring said.

He and fellow engineer Don McKeown have been working on this project for around eight years.

“It was originally developed under NASA to detect wildfires,” McKeown said.

Last year, the device snapped pictures over Haiti after the earthquake devastated the country.

The team then produced maps for the Japanese government following the tsunami.

Now they’re working closely with the New York State Office of Emergency Management.

“They’re ecstatic with what we’ve been giving them recently,” Faulring said.

Faulring says the ultimate goal is to move the technology out into the private market, but until then he says they’ll keep it in-house to fine-tune the technology and use it as a teaching tool.