Just after sunrise on Saturday, a satellite set its long-range camera on the city of Mandalay in Myanmar, not far from the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7 magnitude earthquake that devastated the Southeast Asian country's second-largest city.
The mission was to capture images that, combined with artificial intelligence technology, could help relief organizations quickly assess how many buildings had collapsed or were heavily damaged and where helpers most needed to go.
At first, the high-tech computer vision approach wasn’t working.
“The biggest challenge in this particular case was the clouds,” said Microsoft’s chief data scientist, Juan Lavista Ferres. “There's no way to see through clouds with this technology.”
The clouds eventually moved and it took a few more hours for another satellite from San Francisco-based Planet Labs to capture the aerial pictures and send them to Microsoft's philanthropic AI for Good Lab. By then it was already about 11 p.m. Friday at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. A group of Microsoft workers was ready and waiting for the data.
The AI for Good lab has done this kind of AI-assisted damage assessment before, tracking Libya's catastrophic flooding in 2023 or this year's wildfires in Los Angeles. But rather than rely on a standard AI computer vision model that could run any visual data, they had to build a customized version specific to Mandalay.
“The Earth is too different, the natural disasters are too different and the imagery we get from satellites is just too different to work in every situation,” Lavista Ferres said. For instance, he said, while fires spread in fairly predictable ways, “an earthquake touches the whole city” and it can be harder to know in the immediate aftermath where help is needed.
Once the AI analysis was complete, it showed 515 buildings in Mandalay with 80% to 100% damage and another 1,524 with between 20% and 80% damage. That showed the widespread gravity of the disaster, but, just as important, it helps pinpoint specific locations of damage.
“This is critical information for teams on the ground,” Lavista Ferres said.
Microsoft cautioned that it "should serve as a preliminary guide and will require on-the-ground verification for a complete understanding." But in the meantime, the tech company has shared the analysis with aid groups such as the Red Cross.
Planet Labs says its satellites — it has 15 of them orbiting the Earth — have now photographed roughly a dozen locations in Myanmar and Thailand since Friday's quake.
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, Chinese rescuers looks at a collapsed building before conducting a search and rescue operation in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Myo Kyaw Soe/Xinhua via AP)
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers carry out search and rescue on the damaged buildings in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Monday, March 31, 2025. (Jiang Chao/Xinhua via AP)
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — When North Dakota voters approved term limits for state legislators, they specified that the Legislature couldn’t seek to change the new restrictions.
On Wednesday, the state House opted to propose a big change, anyway.
“You have plain language in the constitution restricting what the Legislature can do,” said Republican Rep. Jared Hendrix, the leader of the term limit ballot initiative in 2022.
The Senate earlier passed the measure. Now it appears set up for the November 2026 election.
The 2022 measure, which amended the state constitution, said the Legislature “shall not have authority to propose an amendment to this constitution to alter or repeal the term limitations established in ... this article.”
Supporting lawmakers said many voters mistakenly thought the 2022 measure was for congressional term limits. Others said the Legislature needs institutional knowledge that is built over years.
“We've got to vote this in, and we've got to convince the people that this is a lot better plan than what we've got on the books right now,” Republican Rep. David Monson said.
Opposing representatives said voters' support for term limits was by a huge margin, and lawmakers can pursue a measure for a ballot initiative if they want changes.
“Do you really, honestly think that the people that voted 60-some percent for this measure that they're going to now all of a sudden turn around and go, ‘Yeah, I’d like to give you guys an extra eight years to stick around,' ” Republican Rep. Steve Vetter said.
The term-limit clock took effect Jan. 1, 2023, restricting lawmakers to eight years in the House and eight years in the Senate. Their previous experience doesn't count. The governor also can't be elected more than twice. No one has been term-limited out of office yet.
The measure set for voters would change the term limits to four complete four-year terms in the Legislature; a term of less than four years would not count toward the limit. The measure also would repeal the prohibition on the Legislature to make changes to term limits.
Republican Senate Majority Leader David Hogue, who supports the measure, said he hasn't formed a firm opinion on whether the Legislature's move is legal.
The measure “just says it's 16 years — doesn't matter whether you're in one chamber or the other — and it's a full 16 years, so I thought it had some fidelity to the measure that the people passed, although it's not exactly what they passed," Hogue said.
Hendrix said the secretary of state, North Dakota's top election official, might seek an attorney general opinion about whether the measure can go on the ballot.
Telephone and text messages seeking comment were left with Secretary of State Michael Howe. A text message also was left with Attorney General Drew Wrigley.
North Dakota's Republican-run Legislature regularly meets every two years, in odd-numbered years.
North Dakota Rep. Jared Hendrix, R-Fargo, talks at his desk Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in the House of Representatives at the state Capitol in Bismarck, N.D. (AP Photo/Jack Dura)
