Use of Digital Surface Model Constructed from Digital Aerial Images to Detect Collapsed Buildings during Earthquake

The collapsed buildings during the 2007 Niigata Chuetsu-oki earthquake are detected based on aerial photogrammetry using digital aerial images. The digital surface models in the area where severe damage incidents were observed after the earthquake are constructed using digital aerial camera images. The pre- and post-event aerial images are employed to obtain the digital surface models in this study. The differences of building heights between pre- and post-event models are considered to detect collapsed buildings and the accuracy of the method is discussed in this paper. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.