Building damage detection using satellite SAR intensity images for the 2003 Algeria and Iran earthquakes

An earthquake occurred in the coast of Algeria on May 21, 2003. The cities of Boumerdes and Zemmouri were the most extensively damaged areas. Canadian SAR satellite, RADARSAT, observed Boumerdes area by the fine-beam mode, on 4 days after the event. European SAR satellite, ERS, also observed the same area on June 7, 2003. On December 26, 2003, another strong earthquake occurred beneath the city of Bam, Iran. Severely damaged areas were found widely being distributed in the city from high-resolution optical satellite images obtained after the event. ENVISAT also captured the hard-hit areas on January 7, 2004. In this paper, we investigated the characteristics of damaged areas in these SAR images by visual interpretation and clarified the effect of spatial resolution for the detection of damaged buildings. Then, we applied our automated damages detection technique, which was developed based on the data set of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, to the SAR images of Algeria and Iran