Application of remote sensing in support of regional disaster risk modeling

Abstract

Remote sensing serves as a valuable tool in many aspects of regional risk modeling for earthquakes and other natural hazards. It is increasingly being used to represent information about buildings and other infrastructure across a range of hazards and across the disaster cycle from pre-event risk assessment through post-disaster recovery monitoring and support. This communication offers a few specific examples of the recent use of remote sensing (including satellite and aerial imagery) to support disaster risk modeling. Application of the new generation of urban fire spread models, both for post-earthquake and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fire situations, would be practically impossible without building inventories developed using remote sensing. As illustrated in Lee and Davidson (2010a, b) and Li and Davidson (in press), in addition to indicating the number and geographic distribution of buildings, remote sensing-derived building footprint maps can provide the relative distances and orientations of buildings, which are critical for fire spread and unavailable from other sources of inventory data. Remote sensing can even provide information about the height, roof type, cladding, and window coverage on each building, which are also important factors in urban fire spread. Rathfon et al. (in press) describes use of remote sensing to analyze housing recovery following Hurricane Charley (2004) in Punta Gorda, Florida. Remote sensing imagery was used together with building permit and other data to describe the initial damage to the housing stock and how it was repaired and rebuilt over time. Independent assessments of the recovery process using remote sensing imagery and building permits yielded remarkably similar results, and geographically linking the remote sensing-based assessments with building permit data, certificates of occupancy, and property appraiser data provided a powerful way to create a full picture of the relevant attributes of each building and the timeline of its recovery trajectory. The different sources linked together are more than the sum of their parts. Hill et al. (2011) similarly discusses use of remote sensing imagery to measure and monitor the initial damage and recovery of buildings following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.