A determination of the earthquake disaster area by object-based analysis using a single satellite image

The final goal of this study is to create data to support emergency efforts in a disaster affected area by locating damaged buildings shortly after the disaster. In this study, prioritizing the practicality of the method for emergency purposes, we designed a method only to use a single satellite image of an affected area, eliminating the use of complex algorithms and auxiliary data. The uniqueness of our method lies in the application of an object-based region segmentation to images and the use of features of objects obtained from texture, hierarchical and other information in order to extract damaged buildings. Out of 26 features resulting from the analysis of objects, we found one feature and three combinations of two different features that are effective in extracting damaged buildings, such as Rectangular fit, Homogeneity, Number of sub-objects/Area, and Length of longest of edge/Area.