Damage assessment of Haiti earthquake emergency using high resolution remote sensing imagery

Abstract

This paper introduces the procedure of emergency remote sensing assessment for Haiti earthquake happened on Jan 12 2010. The procedure is divided into 4 steps: data preparation, data processing, information extraction and damage assessment, and contains three key targets which are damage information extraction, quantitative assessment and estimation of casualties and economic losses. In the first stage, the damage information of the buildings is the basis, and the other information, including building type, damage grade, built-over area, would be extracted by visual interpretation and automatically statistic with human-computer interaction from the high resolution disaster imageries. Then the remote sensing damage index and equivalent ground damage index of building could be counted in the second stage. According to this result, the specialists sketch a more exact intensity distribution in different regions of the metropolis. At last, the number of casualties is estimated by an empirical model adapting to worldwide earthquake as the detailed construction damage has been known. To assess the economic losses, we use a macro economic-based model which only needs population, per capita GDP and statistical macro-economic fragility related to seismic intensity. In this case, it is the first time to implement the methods of remote sensing assessment in foreign serious earthquake emergency, which is proven of being applicable outside China.