To initiate relief activities quickly, it is necessary to comprehend
the impacts and find devastated areas as soon as possible.
Remote sensing technology is useful for this urgent
task. Especially, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is promising
for emergency response, since it is available nearly unaffected
by atmospheric and weather conditions. To detect
building damages in a tsunami devastated area, several kinds
of methods have been studied using SAR data. For instance,
devastated built-up areas were analyzed using full polarimetric
L-band SAR data to investigate the radar backscattering
mechanism that changes between pre- and post-tsunami event
([4], [5]). In [1], a semi-automated method was developed
to estimate the number of washed away buildings at a building
unit scale by using building footprint data and pre- and
post- event TerraSAR-X data. These methods are sophisticated.
However, to apply these methods for the practical usage,
these previous studies need more improvements in terms
of these points; 1) It is necessary to discuss the transferability
with respect to other test site. 2) Considering the situation
building map does not exist, the other method for estimating
building damage is needed to be developed.