A Study on the development of Priority Estimation Process for Supporting Damage Investigation

Abstract

The damage investigation has nowadays been carried out by dispatching personnel of local governments to the natural disaster areas in order to identify the scale of damage caused by natural disasters. However, it is necessary to provide a solution to decrease the large amount of time consumed during the damage investigation. Therefore, this study suggests priority estimation process of the damage investigation that calculates the damaged areas caused by the natural disaster and estimates the damage investigation priority according to the size of the damaged area. The estimation process comprises of four steps including the preprocessing, the damaged area calculation, the priority estimation, and the information provision. The preprocessing is to ensure that the pre- and post-satellite images of the damage and GIS thematic maps have the identical coordinate system and locational information. The damaged area calculation accompanies automatic calculation using the Change Vector Analysis (CVA), Differential Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (DNDVI), and Tasseled Cap Transformation (TCT) algorithms. The priority estimation can be done according to the size of the damaged areas of individual administrative boundaries. The last step of the information provision is to provide necessary information such as land cover and cadastral data within the damaged area through the overlay analysis of land cover map and continuous cadastral maps. The priority estimation process developed in this study is expected to be helpful for more effective dispatching of the personnel of local government and supporting of early response and recovery for the residents within the damaged area. Furthermore, a follow-up study for the development of the system to operate the priority estimation process established in this study is required.