Abstract
Optical satellite images are widely used to detect building damage due natural disasters in the world. However, since optical satellites images are mostly acquired from the vertical direction, they can observe only the roofs of buildings. Building damage such as to side-walls or mid-story collapse is often overlooked because the upper surfaces of buildings do not change too much in the vertical view. This paper proposes the method to detect this kind of building damage from the change in layover effects and radar shadow in SAR intensity images.Multi-temporal TerraSAR-X images covering Sendai-Shiogama Port and Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant were employed to detect building damages due to tsunamis and hydrogen explosions after the 2011 Tohoku, Japan earthquake. The difference in backscattering coefficients before and after the event in layover and radar-shadow areas could show the damages to side-walls of buildings located in these sites.
