Disaster Damage Assessment (DDA)

Disaster Damage Assessment (DDA) is a Synspective analytics solution that maps the damage and surface change caused by natural disasters, such as sediment-related disasters (landslides), building collapse and volcanic ash deposits. After a disaster, responders need to know quickly where an area has been hit and how badly. Cloud, darkness, bad weather or blocked access can make optical imagery and on-site surveys slow or dangerous.

DDA compares synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellite images taken before and after an event. SAR observes through cloud, at night and in bad weather, so damage can be assessed over a wide area, including remote places where it is hard to send people. Synspective's published analyses use radar scattering intensity and coherence to outline the areas likely to be damaged as polygons on a map. They draw on Synspective's own StriX SAR satellites and on Copernicus Sentinel-1 data. Published examples are the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake in Japan, Typhoon Rai in the Philippines (Cebu and Surigao, December 2021) and the January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano. In a 2021-22 joint demonstration with Saga Prefecture and JAXA, DDA was used to analyse landslides and house collapses caused by heavy rain, and its results were compared with drone imagery from SHIMAUCHI ENGINEER.

Synspective names ministries and local governments, non-life insurers, transport infrastructure operators and the media as users. The stated benefits are faster situational awareness and initial response, quicker information sharing between the parties involved, lower survey time and cost, and less exposure to secondary disasters on site. DDA belongs to Synspective's lineup of cloud-based SAR analytics solutions, alongside Flood Damage Assessment (FDA) and Land Displacement Monitoring (LDM).