Measuring urban vulnerability to tsunami hazards using integrative remote sensing and GIS approaches

Kurzfassung

There are large numbers of world’s cities located near coastal lines prone to tsunami hazard. Anticipation measures and disaster mitigation are important in order to minimize the negative impacts that may hit those living and built-up facilities in the cities. The assessment of cities vulnerability is an important measure in order to detect their susceptibilities and coping capacities against tsunami hazards. Measuring vulnerability for large cities using conventional methods is often time consuming and costly. In this research work the capabilities of integrative remote sensing and GIS approaches were applied to assess urban vulnerability against tsunami hazards. This approach incorporates optical high resolution satellite imagery, object oriented image classification, GIS techniques and ground surveys. Each building in the study area was classified automatically into 4 classes (class A, B, C and D) based on their level of vulnerability to tsunami hazard using parameters extracted from remotely sensed data. This paper presents results from Cilacap City, South coast of Java, Indonesia. This research is part of the work of the GITEWS project. The results show that remote sensing and GIS approaches are promising to be applied to measure city vulnerability to tsunami hazards. The main outcomes of the research are the development of new concepts in assessing urban vulnerability to tsunami hazard, a new algorithm for extracting building vulnerability information from very high resolution satellite images, maps of urban vulnerability, and recommendations concerning to urban vulnerability reduction.