Extracting building stock information from optical satellite imagery for mapping earthquake exposure and its vulnerability

The paper focuses on automatic extraction of building stock information for quantifying physical exposure and its vulnerability from High and Very High Resolution (VHR) optical satellite imagery. We use two case studies. In Sana’a (Yemen), we use automatic techniques to extract the building stock as well as building height that is used to characterize its vulnerability. In Port-au-Prince (Haiti)—the area affected by the 2010 earthquake—we map the building stock based on a pre-disaster imagery, and we show the added value of area-based information when added to point-based damage assessment from visual change interpretation of post-disaster aerial images. This paper shows that VHR imagery can be used to locate and quantify the building stock and its height. This paper also shows that damages measured from changes detected from pre- and post-disaster imagery can in principle map and provide vulnerability information related to the structural fragility of the building stock.