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Mapping Damage-Affected Areas after Natural Hazard Events Using Sentinel-1 Coherence Time Series

  • The emergence of the Sentinel-1A and 1B satellites now offers freely available and widely accessible Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. Near-global coverage and rapid repeat time (6–12 days) gives Sentinel-1 data the potential to be widely used for monitoring the Earth’s surface. Subtle land-cover and land surface changes can affect the phase and amplitude of the C-band SAR signal, and thus the coherence between two images collected before and after such changes. Analysis of SAR coherence therefore serves as a rapidly deployable and powerful tool to track both seasonal changes and rapid surface disturbances following natural disasters. An advantage of using Sentinel-1 C-band radar data is the ability to easily construct time series of coherence for a region of interest at low cost. In this paper, we propose a new method for Potentially Affected Area (PAA) detection following a natural hazard event. Based on the coherence time series, the proposed method (1) determines the natural variability of coherence within each pixel in theThe emergence of the Sentinel-1A and 1B satellites now offers freely available and widely accessible Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. Near-global coverage and rapid repeat time (6–12 days) gives Sentinel-1 data the potential to be widely used for monitoring the Earth’s surface. Subtle land-cover and land surface changes can affect the phase and amplitude of the C-band SAR signal, and thus the coherence between two images collected before and after such changes. Analysis of SAR coherence therefore serves as a rapidly deployable and powerful tool to track both seasonal changes and rapid surface disturbances following natural disasters. An advantage of using Sentinel-1 C-band radar data is the ability to easily construct time series of coherence for a region of interest at low cost. In this paper, we propose a new method for Potentially Affected Area (PAA) detection following a natural hazard event. Based on the coherence time series, the proposed method (1) determines the natural variability of coherence within each pixel in the region of interest, accounting for factors such as seasonality and the inherent noise of variable surfaces; and (2) compares pixel-by-pixel syn-event coherence to temporal coherence distributions to determine where statistically significant coherence loss has occurred. The user can determine to what degree the syn-event coherence value (e.g., 1st, 5th percentile of pre-event distribution) constitutes a PAA, and integrate pertinent regional data, such as population density, to rank and prioritise PAAs. We apply the method to two case studies, Sarpol-e, Iran following the 2017 Iran-Iraq earthquake, and a landslide-prone region of NW Argentina, to demonstrate how rapid identification and interpretation of potentially affected areas can be performed shortly following a natural hazard event.show moreshow less

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Author details:Stephanie M. OlenORCiDGND, Bodo BookhagenORCiDGND
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10081272
ISSN:2072-4292
Title of parent work (English):remote sensing
Publisher:Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI)
Place of publishing:Basel
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Date of first publication:2018/08/13
Publication year:2018
Release date:2018/10/10
Tag:Sentinel-1; coherence; natural hazards; potentially affected areas (PAA); rapid damage mapping
Volume:10
Issue:8
First page:1
Last Page:19
Funding institution:Universität Potsdam, Publikationsfonds
Funding number:PA 2018_46
Organizational units:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Geowissenschaften
DDC classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 62 Ingenieurwissenschaften
Peer review:Referiert
Grantor:Publikationsfonds der Universität Potsdam
Publishing method:Open Access
Institution name at the time of the publication:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Erd- und Umweltwissenschaften
License (German):License LogoCC-BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
External remark:Zweitveröffentlichung in der Schriftenreihe Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe ; 471
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