Novel Automated Physical Damage Detector Leveraging 10 cm Visible with 2 m Thermal Imagery

Albedo proposes a novel multi-modal damage assessment capability leveraging our VLEO satellite constellation's unique co-collected 10 cm visible and 2 m thermal imagery. Current damage assessment methods rely heavily on manual interpretation of moderate-resolution satellite imagery, creating critical bottlenecks in disaster response and conflict monitoring that delay actionable intelligence by days or weeks. Existing commercial solutions offer either 30-50 cm visible imagery without thermal capabilities or low-resolution thermal data without high-resolution visible context, forcing analysts to choose between structural or functional assessment.In Phase I, we will demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by developing a prototype algorithm, validating performance with benchmarking data, and implementing a cloud-native processing pipeline capable of meeting operational timelines. We will align our solution with military standards (CJCSI 3162.02) and intelligence community confidence metrics (ICD 203) to ensure seamless integration with existing workflows. Our dual-modality approach is expected to achieve at least 10% improvement in F1 scores over current state-of-the-art damage assessment algorithms, particularly for subtle damage types that evade detection in standard imagery.