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Change Detection Using Airborne LiDAR: Applications to Earthquakes

Aravindhan K. Krishnan, Edwin Nissen, Srikanth Saripalli, Ramon R. Arrowsmith, & Alejandro Hinojosa

Published 2013, SCEC Contribution #1770

We present a method for determining 3-dimensional, local ground displacements caused by an earthquake. The technique requires pre- and post-earthquake point cloud datasets, such as those collected using airborne Light Detection and Ranging (Lidar). This problem is formulated as a point cloud registration problem in which the full point cloud is divided into smaller windows, for which the local displacement that best restores the post-earthquake point cloud onto its pre-earthquake equivalent must be found. We investigate how to identify the size of window to be considered for registration. We then present an information theoretic approach that classifies whether a region contains an earthquake fault. These methods are first validated on simulated earthquake datasets, for which the input displacement field is known, and then tested on a real earthquake. We show results and error analyses for a variety of different window sizes, as well as results for our fault detection algorithm.

Citation
Krishnan, A. K., Nissen, E., Saripalli, S., Arrowsmith, R. R., & Hinojosa, A. (2013). Change Detection Using Airborne LiDAR: Applications to Earthquakes. , : Springer International Publishing Switzerland. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-00065-7_49.