Natural Disasters
can be observed and analysed on a large scale world-wide via remote sensing.
Not only for the insurance industry but also for administrations, authorities and the civil defence it can be important to know about the extent of a natural disaster. Damage can thus be estimated and protection measures can be planned. Also, past events can be analysed using historical data.
Example: Storm damage in coniferous forests
Using satellite data of the years 2004 and 2005, coniferous forest was classified to identify the areas affected by storm damage via change detection.
Forest map before storm (yellow, left), loss of coniferous forest due to the storm (red, right)
It was shown that about 1.53% of the coniferous forests with a total area of 31 732 km² (damaged area 496 km²) were damaged by the storm.
Coniferous forest was classified with an accuracy of 96%.
Percentaged fraction of storm damaged forest.
Only forest area greater equal 1ha was considered
