Title
Identifying building damage patterns in the 2016 Meinong, Taiwan earthquake using post-event dual-polarimetric ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 imagery
Date Issued
01 March 2018
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Bai Y.
Adriano B.
Koshimura S.
Tohoku University
Publisher(s)
Fuji Technology Press
Abstract
The 2016 magnitude 6.4 Meinong earthquake caused catastrophic damage to peoples lives and properties in Taiwan. Synthetic Aperture Radar remote sensing is a useful tool to rapidly grasp the near real-time building damage to areas affected by the earthquake. Previous studies employed X-band single polarized high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery to identify building damage. However, suitable X-band single polarized high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery is not always accessible. Therefore, this research applied L-band dual-polarimetric ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 data to analyze the radar scattering characteristics of three types of affected buildings in the 2016 Meinong earthquake. The results show that collapsed buildings are characterized by a weak double-bounce scattering due to a reduced dihedral structure, while the characteristics of slightly damaged buildings are similar to those of undamaged buildings. Furthermore, the discrimination ability of a series of polarimetric, texture, and color features derived from the dual-polarimetric SAR data for three types of buildings affected by the earthquake are quantified based on a statistical analysis using the pixels in the combined areas of layover, shadow, and building footprint of each building. The results of the statistical analysis show that the spaceborne dual-polarimetric ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 images have good potential to distinguish between slightly damaged buildings and collapsed and tilted buildings. However, it is still difficult to distinguish between collapsed and tilted buildings. In addition, the results of the statistical analysis show that the mean value and variance value of the Gray-Level Co-Occurrence Matrix of the span image are two suitable features by which the categories of building damage can be distinguished. The polarimetric and color features demonstrated poorer performance in terms of distinguishing between damage categories than the texture features.
Start page
291
End page
302
Volume
13
Issue
2
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería de la construcción Otras ingenierías y tecnologías Ciencias ambientales
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85049246145
Source
Journal of Disaster Research
ISSN of the container
18812473
Sponsor(s)
We would like to thank the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) for providing the SAR imagery used in this study. This work was supported by JST CREST Grant Number JPMJCR1411, Japan and China Scholarship Council (CSC). Japan Society for the Promotion of Science - 17H02050.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus