Predicting Ground-Based Damage States from Remote-Sensing Imagery

Researchers have recently begun using high spatial resolution remote-sensing data, which are automatically captured and georeferenced, to assess damage following natural and man-made disasters, in addition to, or instead of employing the older methods of walking house-to-house for surveys, or photographing individual buildings from an airplane. This research establishes quantitative relationships between the damage states observed at ground-level, and those observed from space using high spatial resolution remote-sensing data, for windstorms, for individual site-built one- or two-family residences (FR12). \"Degrees of Damage\" (DOD) from the Enhanced Fujita (EF) Scale were determined for groundbased damage states; damage states were also assigned for remote-sensing imagery, using a modified version of Womble\'s Remote-Sensing (RS) Damage Scale. The preliminary developed model can be used to predict the ground-level damage state using remote-sensing imagery, which could significantly l