Urban block outlining in High-Resolution SAR images based on detection of linear features

While analysing remotely sensed images of urban areas, in many cases an at least approximate knowledge of block partition is useful for specialising operations over areas within which a certain degree of homogeneity can be assumed. In the case of use for emergency management, though, this information may not be accessible in a reasonable time or with a reasonable effort, while it would be useful as a basis for e.g. earthquake damage assessment at the block level [1]. Automatic extraction of block boundaries becomes thus an interesting tool to fill this possible gap. City blocks are usually separated by major urban roads, and a linear feature extractor, originally developed for road network extraction, can provide basic features upon which to partition a very high resolution SAR scene acquired over an urban area. After the first experiments described in [2], the method has been improved and new results produced on a series of COSMO/SkyMed images over geohazard-prone areas. [1] Dell'Acqua, F., Polli, D., Lisini, G. (2010). “ Automatic Mapping of Earthquake Damage using Post-event Radar Satellite Data: The Story Goes On”. Proceeding of the 30th EARSeL Symposium, Paris, France, 31th May - 4th June 2010. [2] Fabio Dell'Acqua, Paolo Gamba, Luca Odasso, Gianni Lisini (2009): "Segment-based urban block outlining in High-Resolution SAR images". Proc. of the 2009 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE 2009), 20-22 May 2009, Shanghai, P.R.C. Unformatted CD-ROM