Meeting remote sensing requirements for faster disaster response

Natural and man-made disasters make the headline many times a year. Crisis images depicting extent of event and intensity of damage are frequently displayed to emphasize the impact of the disaster on the local population. These maps are more and more often generated from raw images acquired by spaceborne sensors. Very high space resolution images are huge and require very careful analysis by numerous teams of trained photo-interpreter in order to provide meaningful maps in a timely manner. This paper describes the acquisition process and image analysis steps currently required to create crisis maps for events for which the International Charter “Space & Major Disasters” is activated. We answer the question “how can image processing time be reduced for faster disaster mapping?” by proposing a semi-automated building detection process.