Determination of Tsunami-affected areas by polarimetric SAR

SAR Interferometry is a common methodology for detection of Natural disaster affected area. However, we applied radar polarimetric analysis to ALOS/PALSRA data sets to investigate the possibility of detection of Tsunami affected area only from the SAR data acquired after the event. The resolution of the SAR image is 30m by 30m and cannot identify each house or buildings in the area. However, we have demonstrated that single-bonce and double-bounce scattering mechanism clearly shows the Tsunami affected area in Ishinomaki city, Japan, after the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. We could also showed that the standard deviation of the polarimetric orientation angle increases by the damage, and can be used for the measure of the damage.