Rapid damage assessment of built-up structures using VHR satellite data in tsunami-affected areas

This paper discusses a general methodology for post-tsunami damage assessment and an automatic procedure able to distinguish between different kinds of damage on built-up structures using very-high-resolution satellite data. The procedure for automatic detection of damaged built-up structures was designed using a multi-criteria approach fusing radiometric, textural, and morphological image features related to pre-and post-disaster data detection. The proposed procedure shows good performance with an estimated overall accuracy equal to 93.97%. The best performances are estimated in the discrimination between non-flooded and flooded built-up structures and in the recognition of collapsed builtup structures with debris in place. Problems of omission error were detected in the recognition of collapsed built-up structures without debris in place as in the case of completed erased built-up structures situated close to the shoreline.