ABSTRACT
In this study, a semi-automated method to estimate building
damage in a tsunami affected area is developed using
pre- and post-event high-resolution synthetic aperture radar
(TerraSAR-X) data. For development, some coastal areas affected
by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami were focused.
The method for estimating building damage consists of three
steps, 1) To detect flooded areas by the tsunami, 2) To detect
built-up areas, 3) To estimate building damage inside the
flooded built-up areas. The previously proposed methods using
high-resolution SAR data needs building footprint data for
estimating building damage[1]. However, this problem was
improved by developing a new method which does not need
building footprint data to estimate building damage caused
by the tsunami. The developed method was validated on the
other test sites and the estimated results showed good consistency
with the ground truth data.
Index Terms— The 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami,
Building damage, Remote sensing, TerraSAR-X