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ImageCat awarded National Science Foundation grant to study the Turkey and Taiwan earthquakes using remote sensing technologies Long Beach, CA - January 23, 2001. ImageCat has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to study the use of advanced technologies in detecting post-earthquake damage in near real-time. Specifically, this research will explore the feasibility of using remotely sensed data (synthetic aperture radar, SAR) to quantify the scope and magnitude of damage after major earthquakes. An important element of this plan will be the use of damage information and data from the 1999 Marmara, Turkey and 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan earthquakes to calibrate and test the resulting methodology. This research project is being performed with the University of Southern California, which is the prime recipient of this research grant. Currently, we are focusing on two specific areas hard hit by the 1999 Turkey earthquake, that is, the towns of
Golcuk and Adapazari. Golcuk is located on the south side of Izmit Bay; the town of Adapazari is located roughly
100 kilometers east of Istanbul. Both towns suffered significant damage to multi-story residential structures.
In our analysis so far, we have been able to correlate strong image changes (in both SAR and optical imagery) that
are due to earthquake effects. We have also normalized these changes to images that reflect ambient conditions of
both areas, i.e., accounting for image changes due to change of season and other factors. These image changes
have also been compared to "ground truth" data collected by a Japanese Reconnaissance team that visited these
towns soon after the earthquake. By calibrating our image changes to these ground truth data, we hope to
construct damage indices that quantify the amount of damage that has occurred on a regional scale. A final
project report is expected in early Fall 2002. 
Contacts: Charles K. Huyck |
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