Comparison of Earthquake Damage Evaluation using Change Detection and Thematic Classification

Because of the availability of high-resolution satellite imagery, remote sensing data has become an attractive source of data for identifying post-earthquake damage. Recently, several semiautomated methods for earthquake damage detection have been developed. These methodologies fall into two general categories: change detection and thematic classification. In change detection, both preand post-earthquake images are required, and pair-wise changes emerging from the pre-post comparison are attributed to earthquake damage. For thematic classification, only post-earthquake data are required, and earthquake damage is identified based on the distinguishing characteristics of features exhibited in the image. This study used pre– and postearthquake satellite images from the 26 December 2003 earthquake in Bam, Iran (Mw = 6.6) as a test bed to demonstrate and compare the capabilities of these two methodologies to detect earthquake-related damage from satellite images.