that figure 7 only showed the damage areas in which there were 
buildings. The rectangle area was idle area and had no buildings. 
Comparing figure 7 with figure 5, the derived damage mapping 
is consistent with the results of the International Centre for 
Geohazards. 
that there are close relationships between building damage level 
and the coherence change index. Thus, urban damage levels are 
mapped based on the index. The map is consistent with the 
results of the International Centre for Geohazards. 
Future sensors or dedicated space-borne or airborne acquisition 
campaigns could be used to rapidly acquire the necessary data 
for such an analysis after such an earthquake and thus make this 
information available for disaster response planning. The 
feasibility of this approach needs to be confirmed by additional 
research though and should be assessed specifically for a region 
of interest. Thus, decorrelation in interferometric images, which 
has typically merely been regarded as a major limitation to 
interpreting interferometric phase measurements, may play an 
important role in rapid damage assessment after natural 
disasters. 
REFERENCES 
MULT] 
a Chi 
b College of G 
KEY WORDS: 
ABSTRACT 
Figure 5 Damage map in the city of Bam reported by ICG 
Figure 6 Coherence change index in the city of Bam 
Figure 7 Derived damage mapping 
[1] ICG Reconnaissance Mission, 2003. Bam Earthquake of 26 
December 2003. Website: 
www.geohazards.no/pdf/Bam_earthquake_report-ICG- 
Revl.pdf (accessed 11 Jan. 2007) 
[2] Massonnet D., Rossi M., Carmona C., et al., 1993. The 
displacement field of the Landers earthquake. Nature, Vol. 364, 
pp. 138-142. 
[3] Jonsson S., Zebker H., Segall P., et al., 2002. Fault slip 
distribution of the 1999 Mw7.1 Hector Mine, California, 
earthquake, estimated from satellite radar and GPS 
measurements. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 
Vol. 92, No. 4, pp. 1377-1389. 
[4] Wright T., Fielding E., and. Parsons B, 2001. Triggered slip: 
observations of the 17 August 1999 Izmit (Turkey) earthquake 
using radar interferometry. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 
28, No. 6,pp. 1079-1082. 
[5] Yamazaki F., 2001. Applications of remote sensing and GIS 
for damage assessment. Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on 
Urban Safety Engineering, pp. 69-84, AIT, Thailand, 
September 21-22. 
[6] Disastercharter.org, 2004. Earthquake Iran (Bam). Website: 
http://www.disasterscharter.org/disasters/iran_e.html (accessed 
11 Jan. 2007) 
[7] Howard A. Zebker and John Villasenor, 1992. Decorrelation 
in interferometric radar echoes. IEEE Transactions on 
Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 950-959 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
Texture analysis 
Grey-level co-occ 
image texture an 
probabilities, whii 
introduces a geo 
processing windo 
Synthetic Apertui 
management and 
classification of 
understanding an 
representation of 
image, is an impc 
automated interpi 
single band and si 
Different method: 
texture, which ca 
and Jain, 1993): 
probabilities (GL< 
length), geometr 
applicable to arti 
random fields (M 
and Clausi, 200Í 
Sarkar N, 1995)) 
(Clausi and Jemi 
1996; Pun and L< 
cons, and there 
analysis method, 
tasks. Among the 
to be the most c 
most predominan 
5. CONCLUSIONS 
It has been demonstrated that coherence changes can be used to 
assess structural damage levels after a damaging earthquake. A 
coherence change index is presented based on the coherence 
coefficient of the SAR interferometric analysis which is a 
sensitive parameter for the detection of superficial change and 
the classification of land use. And the feasibility of earthquake- 
induced urban damage detection is investigated using the 
coherence change index. The method proposed is tested by 
SAR images of the Bam earthquake in 2003. The results show 
The work in the paper was supported by Nature Science 
Foundation, China (No. 50579013) and the innovation project 
foundation of graduate education of Jiangsu province. The 
authors wish to thank the European Space Agency for providing 
Envisat-ASAR data. 
The objective of 
analysis method 1 
for land use/land 
polarization SAR 
follows. Section 
this research. Sec 
results and their ; 
4.