Tsunami Disaster Damage Detection and Assessment Using High Resolution Satellite Data, GIS and GPS – Case study in Sri Lanka

The earthquake triggered near Banda Ache of Indonesia on December 26, 2004 was the fifth most strong for the last 100 years and the worst in 40 years, registering a magnitude of 9.0. The epicenter was located about 300 km west of Medan, west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The earthquake was followed by tsunami, surge of waves that killed nearly a quarter of a million people, mostly in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and India. The coastal regions of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Maldives, Malaysia, and Myanmar were all severely affected.
This paper summarizes the effort of international agencies taken to utilize satellite remote sensing and other mapping tools to provide critical information that may have used for various relief activities and subsequent recovery activities. Services, products provided by various national and international agencies are discussed and summarized. Further, a summary of field survey conducted in Sri Lanka to identify damages to natural features and manmade features are presented. Comparison was carried out to evaluate the use of high-resolution satellite data in damage assessment specifically in severity of building damage, which is a rather complicated using space observation. Assessment to changes and damage is easily observable in coastal areas, vegetation and water cause and completely damaged houses and building. There was a difficulty in identifying the gravity of damage to buildings that were not totally collapsed