Application of optical remote sensing in the Wenchuan earthquake assessment

摘要

A mega-earthquake of magnitude 8 of Richter scale occurred in Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province, China on May 12, 2008. The earthquake inflicted heavy loss of human lives and properties. The Wenchuan earthquake induced geological disasters, house collapse, and road blockage. In this paper, we demonstrate an application of optical remote sensing images acquired from airborne and satellite platforms in assessing the earthquake damages. The high-resolution airborne images were acquired by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The pre- and post-earthquake satellite images of QuickBird, IKONOS, Landsat TM, ALOS, and SPOT were collected by the Center for Earth Observation & Digital Earth (CEODE), CAS, and some of the satellite data were provided by the United States, Japan, and the European Space Agency. The pre- and post-earthquake remote sensing images integrated with DEM and GIS data were adopted to monitor and analyze various earthquake disasters, such as road blockage, house collapse, landslides, avalanches, rock debris flows, and barrier lakes. The results showed that airborne optical images provide a convenient tool for quick and timely monitoring and assessing of the distribution and dynamic changes of the disasters over the earthquake-struck regions. In addition, our study showed that the optical remote sensing data integrated with GIS data can be used to assess disaster conditions such as damaged farmlands, soil erosion, etc, which in turn provides useful information for the post-disaster reconstruction.