An improved automatic detection method for earthquake - collapsed buildings from ADS40 image

Earthquake-collapsed building identification is important in earthquake damage assessment and is evidence for mapping seismic intensity. After the May 12th Wenchuan major earthquake occurred, experts from CEODE and IPSC collaborated to make a rapid earthquake damage assessment. A crucial task was to identify collapsed buildings from ADS40 images in the earthquake region. The difficulty was to differentiate collapsed buildings from concrete bridges, dry gravels, and landslide-induced rolling stones since they had a similar gray level range in the image. Based on the IPSC method, an improved automatic identification technique was developed and tested in the study area, a portion of Beichuan County. Final results showed that the technique¿s accuracy was over 95%. Procedures and results of this experiment are presented in this article. Theory of this technique indicates that it could be applied to collapsed building identification caused by other disasters.

GUO Huadong;  LU Linlin;  MA Janwen;  PESARESI Martino;  YUAN Fangyan; 

2009-12-01

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

JRC55129

1001-6538,   

http://www.springerlink.com/content/p8w0272q01742404/fulltext.pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC55129,   

10.1007/s11434-009-0461-3,