An Automated Technique for Damage Mapping after Earthquakes by Detecting Changes between High-Resolution Images

Abstract. Improving the speed and accuracy of earthquake disaster loss evaluations is very important for disaster response and rescue. This paper presents a new method for urban damage assessments after earthquake disasters by using a change detection technique between bi-temporal (pre- and post-event) high-resolution optical images. A similarity index derived from a pair of images was used to extract the characteristics of collapsed buildings. In this paper, the methods are illustrated using two case studies. Our results confirmed the effectiveness and precision of the proposed technique with optical data of the damage presented using a block scale.