Polarimetric SAR remote sensing of earthquake/tsunami disaster

In this study, changes of the L-band PALSAR polarimetric signal scattered from earthquake/tsunami damaged areas has been investigated. Since it is not always possible to get data sets having sufficiently good spatial/temporal resolutions to detect large area of damages precisely, it is of specific interest to use of wave polarization information appropriate to assess disaster-induced changes of scattering phenomena. Experimental results indicate that different polarimetric parameters and similarity measures provide complimentary information on damages. Consequently, it is important to utilize polarimetric features maximizing target changes and minimizing the false-alarm and the missed-alarm rates in developing damage assessment algorithms.