Kazuki Inoue, Wen Liu, Marc Wieland, Tadashi Sasagawa, Fumio Yamazaki
ACRS 2015 - 36th Asian Conference on Remote Sensing: Fostering Resilient Growth in Asia, Proceedings 2015年
After the Mw 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake on March 11, 2011, many bridges were damaged severely due to the tsunamis caused by the earthquake. Since the road network was fragmented, it was difficult to grasp the level of damage by field surveys alone. In order to provide emergency response quickly after an earthquake, the extraction of damaged areas at an early stage is very important. In this context, satellite images are useful for detecting damages over large areas after disasters. The objective of this study is to collect the damage information quickly by analyzing satellite images. SAR images, which can be obtained in cloudy weather or nighttime, were adopted in this study. TerraSAR-X images covering Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, which were acquired on October 21, 2010 (pre-event), March 13 and 24, 2011 (post-event) were used for change extraction and analysis of bridge damages. The characteristics of the backscattering intensity were investigated by comparing with the damage situation. For collapsed bridges or scored embankments, it can be expected that the SAR backscatter decreases from the pre-event image to the post-event one, and the level of damage can be extracted by proper threshold values of backscatter and the results were compared with aerial/satellite optical images.