Assessing the Impact of the 2023 Kahramanmaras Earthquake on Cultural Heritage Sites Using High-Resolution SAR Images

Abstract

Earthquakes are hard to predict, and the destruction caused by the events far outstrip the monetary damage. Important cultural heritage sites functioning as places of community and identity have a value which evades pure pecuniary calculation. This makes understanding the complete economic and social impact of earthquakes a difficult and daunting task. We use high-resolution TerraSAR-X data acquired after the 2023 earthquake in Turkey to assess its impact on selected cultural heritage sites. Leveraging different orbit and incidence angles of image acquisition allow us to show the difficulties in interpreting high-resolution SAR data. While large impacts, like the complete collapse of structures, can be detected successfully, small-scale damage and partial collapses are often difficult to detect from single SAR images. We find that single SAR scene interpretation for damage assessment of cultural heritage is not a viable option. While contextualizing data might help to understand the situation, SAR is only helpful if data of the intact cultural heritage sites have been obtained before the event.