A radar-based method for detecting tsunami devastated areas using machine learning algorithm

摘要

After catastrophic earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, relief activity and reconstruction activity might be delayed due to the breakdown of information network and interception of roads to the devastated zones. To rapidly estimate the impact of the tsunami, air- or spaceborne remote sensing technologies can be used. In particular, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) which is available independent of atmospheric conditions is promising. In this study, a semi-automatic method using high-resolution multi-temporal SAR data (TerraSAR-X) is proposed to estimate building damage in tsunami devastated areas related to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake tsunami. To develop the method, machine learning, a research field of artificial intelligence, is applied. Finally, evaluation of the model is conducted through cross-validation. The best accuracy is obtained as 89.2 % and kappa statistic is calculated as 0.76 when a decision tree approach (C4.5) is applied.