UN-SPIDER hosts joint Workshop on Remote Sensing and Multi-Risk Modeling for Disaster Management

On 19 and 20 September 2014, UN-SPIDER hosted a joint workshop with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Tohoku University, International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS) on the UN Campus in Bonn. The topic of the workshop was "Remote Sensing and Multi-Risk Modeling for Disaster Management" and aimed to serve as a platform for researchers to exchange ideas and present the recent advances in the field of disaster risk management, response and recovery using remote sensing and geo-science technology.

14 experts from IRIDeS, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Chiba University, DLR's Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) and UN-SPIDER Bonn discussed recent research findings and their implications for Disaster Risk Management.

The core topic was the assessment of damages to buildings and vulnerability of buildings in connection with earthquakes and tsunamis using on optical and SAR remote sensing. Based on a re-analysis of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami disaster of March 2011, the usefulness of remote sensing as a tool to assess and evaluate damages to buildings was demonstrated and new methodological approaches were presented.

Other topics discussed included: Research on water-related risks under climate change, uncertainty issues in risk quantification, flood area assessment, suitability analysis of the differential and persistent scatterer synthetic aperture radar interferometry method for deformation monitoring, estimation of building heights from high-resolution TerraSAR-X imagery and evacuation simulation.

The workshop participants jointly highlighted the need to continue efforts in order to bring up more studies on the transferability and validity of the newly elaborated methods and to join forces in this effort. Such cooperation will greatly enhance the application of applied research results to the practical disaster risk management domain.

The next important steps for cooperation are preparations of significant content for joint side-events during the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai City (Japan) taking place next year in March.

Presentations
Juan Carlos Villagrán de León (UN-SPIDER) - Introduction to UN-SPIDERDownload
Shunichi Koshimura (IRIDeS, Tohoku Univ.) - Lessons from the recent catastrophic tsunami disasterDownload
Antje Hecheltjen (UN-SPIDER) - From science to practice: Recommended practices for disaster risk managementDownload
Fumio Yamazaki (Chiba Univ.) - Detection of exterior damage of buildings from high-resolution SAR imagesDownload
Liu Wen (Chiba Univ.) - Estimation of building heights from high-resolution TerraSAR-X imageryDownload
Masashi Matsuoka (Tokyo Tech) - Assessment of Flooded Areas Using Spectral Mixture Analysis from Satellite Optical Images and Relationship between Water Occupancy and Backscattering Coefficient of SARDownload
Christian Geiss (DLR-DFD) - Remote Sensing for Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Built EnvironmentsDownload
Hideomi Gokon (Tohoku Univ.) - Building damage detection by fusing tsunami numerical modeling and remote sensing technologyDownload
Satomi Hayashi (Tohoku Univ.) - Verifying estimations of tsunami inundation velocity and building damage by tsunami inundation modelingDownload
Simon Plank (DLR-DFD) - Pre-survey suitability analysis of the differential and persistent scatterer synthetic aperture radar interferometry method for deformation monitoring of landslidesDownload
Bruno Adriano (Tohoku Univ.) - Extraction of building damage in tsunami affected areas using TerraSAR-X dataDownload
Erick Mas (IRIDeS, Tohoku Univ.) - Geospatial simulation of tsunami evacuation using GIS data and agent based modelingDownload
Joachim Post (UN-SPIDER/DLR) - Uncertainty and RiskDownload