Effectiveness of PNL technique in disaster damage assessment: evidence from selective case studies

Abstract

Natural disasters often cause large scale infrastructural damage and disruption of services. In such cases, a rapid damage assessment technique might prove beneficial to assist the disaster management efforts. Percent of normal light (PNL) can be one such technique. In this study, we test the effectiveness of PNL technique in rapid damage assessment from four selected case studies, namely the 2014 cyclone Hudhud, 2015 Gorkha (Nepal) earthquake, 2016 Central Italy earthquake, and the 2018 flood in Kerala. The dataset used has been taken from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite–Day/Night Band (VIIRS-DNB) scan data from the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS-1). The change in radiance values from the VIIRS-DNB dataset enables PNL computation to map the disaster affected regions. The results depict that PNL can be a viable alternative for rapid damage assessment.