Building Damage Caused by Earthquake in Turkey

Damage to terrain and the collapse of buildings present significant challenges to human society due to earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters. Rapid and reliable remote sensing identification of disaster area damage and building collapses is crucial for emergency response and disaster mitigation. However, disaster areas are often affected by clouds, rain, fog, smoke, etc., making SAR-based remote sensing an essential tool for ground observation. Leveraging the scale invariance of texture information features in SAR images, the SAR Texture Fractal Change-Based Model (STFCM) enables a swift evaluation of post-disaster surface damage conditions. To address the challenge of coordinating the use of pre- and post-disaster images, the proposed SAR image preprocessing of STFCM effectively overcomes the difficulties arising from significant differences between pre- and post-disaster SAR images. Furthermore, considering the issue of weak SAR image texture information and severe noise interference, STFCM introduces the concept of a neighborhood and proposes a multi-scale multi-order neighborhood SAR texture fractal dimension calculation module based on nested windows. This module effectively enhances the texture information of buildings in SAR images and reduces the interference of noise in SAR image information extraction. Finally, to address the uncertainty caused by chaotic post-disaster surface structures, STFCM proposes a multiscale fractal dimensional consistency assessment module. The consistency analysis based on multiscale fractal change monotonicity provides more accurate and reliable results. The STFCM operates independently on computers, conducts automatic computations, and efficiently identifies surface damage across disaster-stricken areas as well as critical local regions with speed and accuracy, providing technical support for remote sensing mapping of damaged areas, rapid assessment of disaster situations, and decision-making in emergency response and relief efforts.