Remote assessment of tsunami damage in Japan by means of Google Street View images

Abstract

The devastating Great East Japan tsunami of 2011 highlighted the vulnerability of urban habitations to such major disasters and the need to improve survivability. As has become the norm after such events, field teams were sent to investigate and learn lessons to aid future design guidelines.

In addition, Google Street View cars were sent around inundated areas once roads were cleared and the resulting images were displayed online allowing ready comparison with images taken before the event. This report is the output from a project which examined this remote assessment tool to determine its usefulness for engineers. It was found that much of what is observable in the field is also visible in the online archive. Performance of structures of different types can be assessed both quantitatively, as a function of distance from the shoreline, and also qualitatively for beneficial features such as open ground floors. Advantageous features of urban design such as sheltering by trees and other buildings, and siting of structures to serve as vertical evacuation centres could, also be assessed.

Overall, although the online images cannot completely replace a field survey, they have the potential to exploit untapped resource in researchers around the world collaborating with local engineers to learn lessons and improve tsunami resistance of vulnerable coastal communities.

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