Use of Optical Satellite Images for the Recognition of Areas Damaged by Earthquakes

After an earthquake occurs, it is vital to identify hard-hit areas and evaluate the degree of damage. The evaluation can be carried out through a field reconnaissance survey. However, it is time consuming and requires a lot of resources. In case of a large natural disaster, a fast assessment of the damaged areas is required to dispatch rescue teams to the heavily damaged areas and draw recovery plans. In this paper, satellite images are used to identify the affected areas due to the 1999 Kocaeli, Turkey earthquake. A method is developed to recognize the heavily damaged areas, sunk areas into the sea, and the areas affected by fire. The damage detection has been carried out by comparing and rationing between different bands of the LANDSAT/TM satellite images taken before and after the earthquake. The results obtained by using this method are then compared with the ones that were obtained from field surveys