InSAR-based rapid damage assessment of urban building portfolios following the 2023 Turkey earthquake

Abstract

Timely acquisition of disaster information and damage assessment are crucial for mitigating earthquake impact. However, obtaining post-earthquake information promptly is challenging due to the disruptions caused by earthquakes to human activities and the environment. Remote methods have been widely used for rapidly assessing post-earthquake damage owing to their convenience and high precision. Among these methods, Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is renowned for its large area coverage capabilities. However, InSAR may not be suitable for monitoring horizontal deformation of buildings. This study introduces a rapid loss assessment method for post-earthquake building portfolios based on InSAR. Specifically, we obtained the deformation in the horizontal direction of building portfolios in Adıyaman and Nurdağı during the 2023 Turkey earthquake based on InSAR and evaluate the proposed method's effectiveness by comparing it with optical remote sensing imagery. The results demonstrate that this method is efficient and cost-effective in evaluating post-earthquake damage of building portfolios.