Remote Sensing and Earthquake Damage Assessment: Experiences, Limits, and Perspectives

In this paper, a survey of the techniques and data sets used to evaluate earthquake damages using remote sensing data is presented. After a few preliminary definitions about earthquake damage, their evaluation scale, and the difference between identification of damage “extent” and identification of damage “level,” the advantages and limits of different remote sensing data sets are presented. Furthermore, a survey of proposed algorithms for data interpretation and earthquake damage extraction is presented, and two examples of these algorithms and their results are discussed. According to the outcome of this survey, some open issues are finally presented and discussed, identifying possible research lines as well as working solutions.