Abstract
The distribution of building damage due to the 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake was interpreted visually using aerial television images taken by high-definition television (HDTV) cameras. Comparing the interpretation results obtained by different people, the accuracy of the interpretation for wooden building damage was inspected. These results were compared with the results of the ground survey. For wooden buildings, severe and moderate damages were mostly recognized in the aerial HDTV images. Almost the same result was obtained, regardless of who performs the determination. The damage level of non-wooden buildings extracted from the aerial images corresponded to collapsed and severe damage in the ground survey. Hence, aerial television images may be used to grasp overall damage distribution of urban areas due to earthquakes at an early stage.
