A dual-polarimetric approach to earthquake damage assessment

Citation

Ferrentino E, Marino A, Nunziata F & Migliaccio M (2019) A dual-polarimetric approach to earthquake damage assessment. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 40 (1), pp. 197-217. https://doi.org/10.1080/01431161.2018.1511935

Abstract
In this study, a novel physical approach is proposed to detect damages due to earthquakes using dual polarimetric (DP) coherent Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery. An optimization method, aimed at enhancing scattering basis differences between measurements collected before and after the event, is designed exploiting Lagrange optimization of the difference between two polarimetric covariance matrices. A meaningful showcase is presented to demonstrate the soundness of the proposed approach that consists of processing Sentinel–1 C–band scenes related to 2016 Central Italy Earthquake. The proposed approach, which is contrasted with the conventional coherence based single– and dual–polarization approaches, results in the best sensitivity to damages.

Keywords
General Earth and Planetary Sciences

Journal
International Journal of Remote Sensing: Volume 40, Issue 1