Block-based damage assessment of the 2012 Ahar-Varzaghan, Iran, earthquake through SAR remote senisng data

On the 11
^th
of August 2012 two earthquakes within 11 minutes struck NW Iran with considerable fatalities and damages. Four Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images from Wide Multi-look Fine mode of RADARSAT-2 data have been considered for rapid damage assessment through SAR interferometry processing. All images are from ascending orbits with 8 m spatial resolution. The first pair (2012.04.13 and 2012.09.08) covers the whole study area while the second one (2012.03.13 and 2012.08.28) partially encompasses the study area. Since the study area comprises 38 rural sites, the block-based building damage assessment method has been pursued instead of individual parcel assessment. The aggregated pixel method for the coherence map shows that the accuracy of initial damage assessment (and Kappa coefficient) is 60% (0.51) which profitably can be used in proper disaster management and any “where to go first” operation.