Colour and texture based change detection for urban disaster analysis

A rapid visualisation of change in urban crisis areas is an important condition for planning and coordination of help. For automated change detection, a large number of algorithms has been proposed and developed. This paper describes the results of a colour and texture based change detection approach that was applied to satellite and aircraft images of the earthquake region in Haiti. In our integrated methodology, we calculate firstly new colour texture images which are based on the feature `energy´. This is performed for every channel in the visible colour spectrum at two different times after a radiometric harmonisation. Combined with a principal component analysis for each texture image and a subsequent histogram optimisation, we subtract the texture elements to visualise the occurred change. As result, it is not only possible to automatically delineate areas of change but also to distinguish between different types of change.