"Megacities and Natural Disasters" is a HGF-EOS research project with the purpose to develop, apply and link technologies and methodologies for integrated disaster management, including both prevention and management. The PhD thesis of Hannes Taubenböck (DLR) focused on the capabilities and limitations of remote sensing to assess risk and vulnerability in urban areas.

The thesis mainly focuses on automated methodologies to extract indicators describing vulnerability from multisensoral remote sensing data. Apart from land-cover classification products, urban morphology parameters and population distribution was derived. In an interdisciplinary research approach in cooperation with civil engineering, the assessment of structural vulnerability was possible.

Project partners were the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), and the Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM) of the University of Karlsruhe.

Fig. 1: Landcover classification on building/block level of the district Üsküdar on the Anatolian side of the megacity Istanbul, Turkey. Seven classes enable an area-wide and up-to-date knowledge of "what" is "where" within the complex urban system.

Fig. 2: Products supporting the spatial assessment of risk and vulnerability in Üsküdar, Istanbul: Accessibility of potentially affected or safe areas, slope as indicator for areas at high landslide risk or potential tsunami inundation areas as a secondary threat of an expected earthquake.

Lieratur:

TAUBENBÖCK, H. (2008): Vulnerabilitätsabschätzung der Megacity Istanbul mit Methoden der Fernerkundung. PhD Thesis. University of Würzburg; p. 178. ISBN-10: 3639083180. (Online publication: http://www.opus-bayern.de/uni-wuerzburg/volltexte/2008/2804/ )