Earthquake’s rubble heaps volume evaluation: Expeditious approach through earth observation and geomatics techniques

When an earthquake of a certain magnitude hit a populated zone, a huge amount of data have to be collected in order to address the typical hazard and emergency actions for rescue, assistance, viability, etc. In this paper we concentrate our attention on a particular dataset used to estimate the amount (and location) of rubbles generated by partial or total collapse of buildings/structures, which strongly influences the consequent environmental hazard and reconstruction phase. Despite this information is particularly valuable for optimizing the emergence response, for example by improving the management of their prompt removal, there are not many methods to estimate the amount of the rubbles in terms of volume/weight. Here, a procedure to estimate the volume of rubble heaps through earth observation data and Geomatics techniques is presented and preliminary results discussed. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.