Quickbird Panchromatic Images for Mapping Damage at Building Scale Caused by the 2003 Bam Earthquake

Remote sensing sensors for detecting urban damage and other surface changes due to earthquakes is gaining increasing interest. To this aim optical images can represent useful tools for this application thanks to their very high ground geometric resolution, especially when more frequent revisit times will be feasible to the implementation of new missions and future possible constellations of satellites. Sub-meter resolution images at visible frequencies are able to provide information at the single building scale. This kind of information is extremely important if provided with sufficient timeliness to rescue teams. In this work, the December 26th, 2003, earthquake that hit the ancient city of Bam (Iran) has been investigated. The urban area was very close to the epicenter of the seism thus causing strong damage to the urban structures. Pre- and post-earthquake QuickBird panchromatic images have been used to show the capability of this data to map damage at building scale by means of segmentation approach based on the application of morphological operators. A validation process has been performed by comparing the map of damage levels at single building scale with a detailed ground-based damage map provided by in situ survey.