Image based disaster assessment using fractal dimension

It has been proven that geological objects such as mountains, river patterns, green cover distribution, human settlements have the characteristics of fractals. Fractals can be used to describe complex geometric shapes which makes them a suitable choice to characterize terrains with convoluted features and irregularity. In this paper, simple fractal dimension along with its merits and demerits for fractal characterization are discussed. Also, indices of simple fractal dimension of satellite images of areas before and after earthquakes have been compared, in an attempt to give a mathematical representation to the natural phenomenon.