EEFIT and SAR for post-earthquake damage assessment: lessons learned and new frontiers

Earthquake damage is the tractable case for remote sensing from space: the shock is dated, the target is defined, and an in-situ observation is reachable. No other hazard offers all four. Here, EEFIT present the lessons learned from five of their missions to Haiti, Nepal, Türkiye, Morocco and Colombia. In particular, they analyse the state-of-the-art SAR damage-mapping techniques and highlight current gaps in the development of operational products and in validation/benchmarking practices. Across eight Copernicus EMS earthquake activations since September 2023, they analyse 141 crisis products from newly tasked imagery and highlight the unique value that EEFIT is bringing to the field of remote-sensing damage mapping. Overall, while more radars are already flying, the shortfall remains in evaluation rather than observation.
 

Speakers

Giorgia Giardina

Giorgia Giardina

Associate Professor in Geo-Monitoring and Data Analytics, Delft University of Technology

Prior to joining TU Delft, Dr. Giardina was a lecturer at the University of Bath, a visiting professor at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research associate and a Junior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Giorgia is a member of EEFIT, the 4TU Centre for Resilience Engineering (4TU.RE), and the International Scientific Committee on the Analysis and Restoration of Structures of Architectural Heritage (ISCARSAH). Her research aims to increase urban resilience by evaluating the vulnerability of buildings and infrastructure to multiple hazards.

Pietro Milillo

Pietro Milillo

Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Houston

Dr. Milillo is also a Guest Scientist at the Microwaves and Radar Institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR). He holds a PhD in Environmental Engineering and a Master in Physics. Previously, he was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow and then Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He has taken part in EEFIT reconnaissance missions as lead, co-lead and member, on the remote sensing side. His current work moves from developing damage detection methods to building the benchmark to score them, on the argument that the binding constraint is no longer observation but evaluation. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles.