Monitoring spatial distribution of population and buildings using DMSP night-time imagery and its application for earthquake damage assessment

Lack of basic information about human settlement hinders the disaster damage assessment and thus disaster reduction planning in developing countries. Socio-economic statistics which have been accumulated by administrative jurisdictions limits trans-jurisdictional assessment. Night-time city light captured by DMSP satellite has been focused on as an index of human settlement across the boundary. In this paper, we proposed a more automated data processing method for assessing the activities of human settlement quantitatively using DMSP night-time imagery and applied this method to Tokai-Tonankai-Nankai earthquakes damage assessment where damage would be spread over several hundreds of kilometres.