Earthquake damage assessment using dual-polarimetric Sentinel-1 ascending-descending orbits

In this study, dual-polarization (DP) C-band Sentinel-1 SAR imagery collected using ascending and descending orbit are combined to generate an added-value product that consists of mapping the level of damages of earthquake-Affected areas. The damaged area refers to the city of Amatrice that was devastated by the earthquake that hit central Italy on 24 August 2016. First, a DP change detection scheme, which uses a pair of SAR imagery collected before and after the earthquake, is used. Then, to quantify the levels of damage, an unsupervised classifier based on Fuzzy c-means clustering is exploited. Finally, the damage maps obtained from ascending and descending orbit are properly combined. The validation is undertaken using a ground information provided by Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). Experimental results show that the joint use of ascending and descending orbits improves the quality of the damage map.