Preliminary Studies on Recovering Communities from Typhoon using Radiance Measurement from VIIRS

Abstract

Typhoons have been one of the most destructive natural disasters in the world. The Philippines has visited by about 20 tropical cyclones per year and the Bicol region is regarded to be the most disaster-prone area in the country. On November 1, 2020, a locally known Typhoon Rolly had struck the Bicol region causing widespread damage in the area. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) significantly can use to quantify the damages or loss by detecting the changes in power outages before and after the typhoon using the well- calibrated day/night band (DNB). Comparison of the Nighttime light images help to determine the recovery phase of the Bicol region by extracting the red pixel value of the images using Python. The data were obtained from the EOSDIS worldview from September 2020 to March 2021. These images were affected by unnecessary noises thus, it has to be cropped and cleaned to have accurate pixel value. The primary objective of this research is to explore the use of the VIIRS instrument with DNB sensor as the first-hand method in monitoring and collecting data on recovering communities from typhoon among the affected population and human settlements. The analysis shows that Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is useful in detecting power outages and has potential use in the rapid assessment of typhoon disasters. Rapid and effective assessment of typhoon damages is useful supplementary data for Government disaster response and policymaking.