2018 Hokkaido Earthquake and Post-disaster Monitoring
Japan is constantly under threats from natural disasters. To protect people’s lives and minimise economic losses, the authorities need immediate information from the affected areas.
Test
On September 6, 2018, an earthquake occurred in the central-eastern part of the Iburi area in Hokkaido, Japan. The strong tremors and massive landslides caused enormous damage to structures such as houses and roads. According to Fire and Disaster Management Agency reports, the death toll rose to 41 and 749 people were injured, while 409 houses were completely destroyed, thousands were half- or partially destroyed. Water and electricity supplies were cutoff across the island.
It was highly crucial to collect critical information soon after the earthquake and efficiently provide it to the relevant ministries and organisations including: the disaster affected municipalities, private corporations, media, etc.
SPOT and Pléiades satellite imagery were acquired to grasp an overview of the wider areas of destruction quickly and precisely to facilitate damage assessment and prevent secondary disasters and enable smooth recovery work.
Thanks to the Okinawa Ground Station in Japan, SPOT imagery production was performed and delivered within 4 hours of acquisition. A report was produced and delivered quickly after.
PASCO significantly contributed to the swift understanding of the situation by providing collected and analyzed information such as:
- Automatic interpretation of sediment movement based on SPOT satellite imagery that were interpreted through advanced image analysis with in-house (PASCO) algorithms.
- Numerous occurrences of slope collapses were clearly observable on 50 cm Pléiades image.
- Aerial Photography
- Superimposing Pléiades and SPOT imagery to then layer vector information on top. The vector information are also overlaid.
- Creation of 3D information for the landslides
- Satellite images from night time acquisition
Hokkaido earthquake caption