A novel approach to building change detection in very high resolution SAR images

This paper proposes a novel approach to building change detection in Very High Resolution (VHR) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images. The proposed approach is based on three concepts: i) the selection of the proper scale of representation; ii) the extraction of information on changes associated with increase and decrease of backscattering at the selected building scale (hot-spots); and iii) the exploitation of the expected backscattering proprieties of buildings to detect new and fully destroyed buildings. Experimental results obtained on a data set made up of two COSMO-SkyMed (CSK®) spotlight images acquired in 2009 over the city of L'Aquila (Italy) before and after the earthquake that hit the region, demonstrated that the proposed approach allows an accurate identification of destroyed buildings while presents a low rate of false alarms. © 2012 SPIE.