Seismically induced structural damage, as well as any damage caused by a natural catastrophic event, covers a wide area. This suggests to supervise the event consequences by vision tools. This paper reports the evolution from the results obtained by the project RADATT (RApid Damage Assessment Telematics Tool) funded by the European Commission within FP4. The aim was to supply a rapid and reliable damage detector/estimator for an area where a catastrophic event had occurred. Here, a general open-source methodology for the detection and the estimation of the damage caused by natural catastrophes is developed. The suitable available hazard and vulnerability data and satellite pictures covering the area of interest represent the required bits of information for updated telematics tools able to manage it. As a result the global damage is detected by the simple use of open source software. A case-study to a highly dense agglomerate of buildings is discussed in order to provide the main details of the proposed methodology.