Case Study : Professor Aids Rescue Efforts Using ENVI Image Analysis Software and ArcGIS

Imagery Guides Emergency Response

Responding quickly and effectively after a disaster has occurred is paramount to reducing injuries and saving lives, preventing property loss and mitigating further damage. Today, geospatial imagery and advanced image analysis tools are used to provide timely, critical information to decision makers following manmade and natural disasters. Information from imagery has been utilized after recent natural disasters including the 2010 Haiti earthquake and Hurricane Katrina and is currently being used in Japan following the monstrous earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck in 2011. On March 11, 2011, a powerful 9.0-magnitude earthquake hit Japan unleashing a massive tsunami that crashed into Japans northeastern coast, resulting in widespread damage and destruction. Japanese officials soon realized that they needed crucial information from imagery in order to help their citizens and asked the worldwide remote sensing community for help. Shortly after the earthquake and tsunami, Dr. Terance L. Winemiller, GISP, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Geography at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) was contacted by the GISCorps working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) asking if he would volunteer to process and analyze imagery from Japan. Soon after agreeing to help, Dr. Winemiller had 1,200 different imagery datasets at his disposal and needed to quickly and accurately process and analyze the imagery and create maps to provide valuable information to emergency responders.

SynopSiS
- Using ENVI, Dr. Winemiller and his students were
able to easily process imagery gathered from many different satellites and prepare it for viewing and analysis.

- The integration of ENVI and ArcGIS allowed Dr.

Winemiller to seamlessly integrate the processed and analyzed imagery into ArcMap where detailed maps were created.

- Satellite imagery that was processed and analyzed

in ENVI gave emergency responders in Japan critical situational awareness about areas devastated by the earthquake and tsunami.

Professor Provides Assistance

AUM in collaboration with the GISCorps was one of four universities across the United States tasked by USGS to process and analyze imagery to help guide emergency response efforts in Japanese coastal communities that were directly impacted by the tsunami. Less than two days after the disaster, Dr. Winemiller and a team of GIS students at AUM began working on the project. They started by searching for imagery on the USGS Earth Resources Observation Systems (EROS) Hazards Data Distribution System (HDDS) public and restricted databases and other public sites for coverage of the three areas in Japan they were assigned, Miyagi-Kamaishi, Iwate-Miyako and Iwate-Miyakoshi.

A pre-disaster (left) WorldView-1 image taken February 4, 2011 and a post-disaster (right) QuickBird image taken March 18, 2011 that have been visualized using ENVI. Images courtesy of DigitalGlobe.

Data layers in ArcGIS 10 including updated available satellite imagery footprints by sensor downloaded from the USGS EROS HDDS.

Since time was of the essence, Dr. Winemiller and his students took the imagery that they had and started using the built-in capabilities in ENVI to process the imagery. Automated pre-processing tools in ENVI allow users to quickly and easily prepare imagery for viewing or additional analysis. Enhancement capabilities utilized by Dr. Winemiller and his students included resampling, subsetting, building mosaics and georeferencing. Resampling lowers pixel count and increases pixel size so that different images can be registered with each other and fused together. Subsetting crops images to focus them on areas of interest. Georeferencing establishes the correct position of an image relative to another image or a map. Building a mosaic combines multiple images together into one larger scene. Dr. Winemiller and his students had to sift through and ingest large amounts of data from a variety of sensors and platforms in a short period of time and produce before and after scenes of the areas so the extent of the damage could be understood. They needed technology that would enable them to easily process and analyze their imagery and export it to ArcGIS where detailed maps could be produced. They ultimately chose ENVI software for their solution, which combines the latest spectral image processing and image analysis capabilities in a user-friendly interface, allowing the user to obtain accurate results that are produced fast and efficiently. Dr. Winemiller and his students had satellite imagery from a multitude of sensors including IKONOS, SPOT, WorldView-1 and -2, QuickBird, Landsat, ASTER and others. The first thing they needed to do was look through the imagery to determine their coverage and see if they had any utility for their mission. They did this by opening and examining their imagery in ENVI. ENVI supports imagery types gathered from todays popular satellite and airborne sensors including panchromatic, multispectral, hyperspectral, radar, thermal, lidar and more. Dr. Winemiller and his students soon realized that a large percentage of the imagery needed to be enhanced in order to improve clarity and be able to match up images from different sensors pixel for pixel and link them together so that they could create accurate maps that could be used for damage assessment.

ENVI was the perfect tool to use because it was fully capable of doing all of the different types of image processing that we needed
- Dr. Terance L. Winemiller GISP, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Geography at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM)

Integrating ENVI and ArcGIS

After the images were processed in ENVI, Dr. Winemiller and his students output the images as GeoTIFFs and imported them as datasets into ArcMap where they created detailed maps using the enhanced and processed imagery. The workflow between ENVI and ArcGIS was a piece of cake, said Dr. Winemiller. ENVI makes it seamless to update ArcGIS with current information from geospatial imagery. ENVIs advanced image analysis tools are also available directly from the ArcGIS desktop and server environments for users who wish to access them inside these platforms. Because of the need to get imagery to responders on the ground as quickly as possible, there was limited opportunity for Dr. Winemiller and his students to perform detailed image analyses. Initially, visual comparisons of the processed before and after scenes was performed to identify the areas with the most damage. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Winemiller was able to use the feature extraction tool in ENVI on pre- and post-earthquake imagery and identify grids, building footprints and other items to more accurately compare images. The feature extraction tool in ENVI extracts specific objects of interest based on their spatial, spectral and texture characteristics. If given more time, Dr. Winemiller hopes to use the change detection tool in ENVI to detect and measure changes between images. The automated workflow for detecting change in ENVI identifies the type and extent of changes that have taken place in an area over time. Satellite imagery has become a major component of post-disaster relief efforts like the one in Japan. The global coverage of satellite sensors make them ideal for providing the imagery that is required when time is at a premium, such as after a disaster. In order to process and extract the valuable information contained in imagery, ENVI is frequently relied upon. Using satellite imagery and ENVI enabled us to create up-to-date maps that gave emergency responders in Japan critical situational awareness about areas that were affected, damage extent and the resources that were needed, said Dr. Winemiller. We were happy to be able to help our global neighbors and to provide our students with a terrific learning opportunity involving a very real-world situation.

Pre-tsunami ENVI feature extraction results in ArcGIS10. Features extracted from WorldView-1 (March 11, 2011). Images used with permission by DigitalGlobe.

Post-tsunami ENVI feature extraction results in ArcGIS10. Features extracted from WorldView-1 (March 19, 2011). Images used with permission by DigitalGlobe.

ENVI

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