Extraction of Building Damages in the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki Earthquake Using Digital Aerial Images

Remote sensing technology is effective to grasp the damage distributions from various natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. After the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu-oki, Japan earthquake, aerial images were taken in the stricken area by several air survey companies in Japan. Airborne remote sensing is more suitable to collect detailed damage distribution because it provides higher resolution images than satellite remote sensing does. The post-event image taken by a digital aerial camera (DMC) is employed in this study to detect building damages. Although the accuracy of visual damage inspection is good enough, it takes time to perform for the whole areas that are subjected to severe ground motion. Therefore, in this study, the automated technique is proposed to extract building damages. The proposed technique is expected to contribute for the damage assessment at an early stage after the occurrence of an earthquake.