Performance of ALOS-2 PALSAR-2 for disaster response

Abstract

In 2016, the Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2, “DAICHI-2”) observed various disaster affected areas. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) operated the emergency observation more than hundred times in the year. The Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar-2 (PALSAR-2) aboard ALOS-2 contributed for detecting the disaster affected area, ground deformation and flood affected area. Especially for the ground deformation and damaged area detection caused by the devastating earthquakes in 2016, e.g., Kumamoto earthquakes in Japan and Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand, researchers provided variable analytical results from ALOS-2 observation data. In this paper, some examples of the emergency observation results are presented.