Polarimetric analysis of the disastorus environment by using Pi-SAR

This paper attempts the polarimetric analysis of disastrous environment by fully polarimetric data. There was the mid Niigata prefecture earthquake in 2004. Main-shock which was located in the mid Niigata area with magnitude of 6.8 occurred on October 23. In addition, many after-shocks which included magnitude 6 class arose. Thus, in the mountainous area the many landslides happened and dammed some rivers (landslide dam). In order to monitor the areas affected by these earthquakes, an observation was carried out by airborne polarimetric and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (PiSAR) on October 26 and November 3, and the multi-frequency (Xand L-bands) fully polarimetric data and interferometric data were obtained. There is a possibility that polarimetric analysis of these data improves an estimation of damage caused by the earthquake. Some polarimetric analysis techniques are applied to X-band Pi-SAR data for monitoring the disastrous environment of the mid Niigata prefecture earthquake. We show the observed data and the results of polarimetric analysis. Keywords-radar polarimetry; SAR; earthquake; monitoring