Abstract
After the Tohoku (Japan) earthquake in March 2011, the National Institute for Land and Infrastructure Management interpreted and processed satellite images to determine the distribution of landslides caused by the earthquake. The study used multispectral images captured by the ALOS AVNIR-2 radiometer and panchromatic stereo images from the PRISM sensor provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, along with satellite images with sub-meter ground resolution from Google Earth for coastal regions. The conclusions of this study are as follows. High-resolution (less than 1 m), large-area images from optical satellites were necessary for this sort of application. Automatic identification of landslides using satellite images led to some misidentifications. Visual interpretation of satellite images quickly revealed the spatial distribution of large-scale landslides. Acquiring recent nadir images and updating them frequently is essential.
