Observation of the Eastern Japan Great Earthquake Disaster with the X-Band Airborne SAR System (Pi-SAR2) of NICT

The east coast of Japan was heavily damaged in a wide area by the tsunami after the eastern Japan great earthquake on March 11, 2011. NICT conducted observations of the damaged areas by an airborne X-band SAR system (Pi-SAR2: polarimetric and interferometric SAR 2). Pi-SAR2 is high resolution of 0.3 m (slant-range). These SAR images of Pi-SAR2 are useful to detect the destruction of buildings and bridges and to identify flooded areas from the viewpoint of high resolution. We continuously observed the damaged area by Pi-SAR2 to monitor the reconstruction.In this paper we describe issues in the detection of the damaged area by the earthquake and tsunami with high resolution SAR data of Pi-SAR2 in 2011 and improvements.