Detecting sparse earthquake damages in high density urban settlements by VHR SAR data

摘要

Nowadays, space-bome Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors, can achieve spatial resolutions in the order of 1 m. However, the exploitation of SAR at very high resolution (VHR) for detecting sparse and isolated damages in urban areas, caused by earthquakes, is still a challenging task. Within urban settlements, the scattering mechanisms are extremely complex and simple change detection analyses or classification procedures can hardly be performed. In this work the 2009, L'Aquila (Italy), earthquake has been considered as case study. Despite about 300 people were killed by the earthquake, few buildings were completely collapsed, and many others were heavily/partially damaged, resulting in a quite sparse damage distribution. We have visually analyzed pairs of VHR SAR data acquired by COSMO-SkyMed satellites, in SPOTLIGHT mode, before and after the earthquake. Such analyses were performed to understand the SAR response of damaged structures surrounded by unaffected buildings, with the aim to identify possible strategies to map the damaged buildings by using an automatic classification procedure. The preliminary analyses based on RGB images, generated by combining pre- and post-event backscattering images, allowed us to figure out how the completely collapsed and the partially damaged buildings are characterized in the SAR response. These outcomes have been taken into account to set up a decision tree algorithm (DTA). Decision rules and related thresholds were identified by statistically analyzing the values of backscattering and derived features. This study point out that many pieces of information and discrimination rules must be exploited to obtain reliable results when dealing with non-extensive and sparse damage within a dense urban settlement.