Quantifying the building stock from optical high-resolution satellite imagery for assessing disaster risk

Abstract

This paper discusses the usefulness of VHR imagery in quantifying the stock of buildings, referred herein as building stock, to assess the risk of losses due to natural hazards. The paper focuses on information available from VHR satellite imagery and on two operational techniques used to assess the building stock. The first procedure is visual analysis, which has been used for decades to extract information from aerial photography. The second procedure is based on an automatic texture-based algorithm used to quantify built-up areas from satellite imagery combined with a statistical sampling approach that derives the building stock. Legaspi in the Philippines is used as a case study.