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International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Vol XXXV, Part B7. Istanbul 2004 
known to lead to reduced separability of small features. The 
low data quality also led to poor results of the automated 
damage assessment. No combination of HIS, edge and variance 
characteristics was able to detect all damage, further hindered 
by the nature of the damage, which included burnt buildings as 
well as structures removed by the blast. Nevertheless, we 
created a working environment suitable for the processing of 
video streams, and we are planning further work to incorporate 
more generic damage indicators. 
The software was also used to extract GPS and camera 
orientation information encoded in the imagery, which was used 
to register the video frames, viewing orientation and the IFOV 
automatically. 
Video data, typically acquired by the news media after a 
disaster, but increasingly also by law enforcement agencies, are 
suitable for a rapid post-event inventory of urban damage. The 
principal advantages over satellite data are timely availability 
and versatility, i.e. the possibility to obtain optical, infrared or 
thermal data at required scales and viewing angles. However, 
our work has shown that, for the data to be of use, the following 
requirements should be met: (i) as much as possible/practical, 
image acquisition should cover all affected areas and follow 
some cohesive flight pattern; (ii) cameras encoding auxiliary 
information are most useful. In addition to the information 
available in our imagery, the flying height and zoom factor are 
also required. If possible, information on helicopter/plane 
attitude, using an IMU system, should also be collected; (iii) 
lastly, best results can be achieved if data are recorded digitally 
at a high resolution (at least S-VHS [720x576], but preferably 
using HDTV), and transferred directly to the computer. 
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Acknowledgements 
Video data of the disaster site were made available by TV Oost 
and the Enschede Police's TOL-Team. We particularly thank 
Hans Kampermann for his support, and providing additional 
aerial photographs. We further acknowledge the help of Karl 
Grabmaier in the photogrammetric processing.