What question did this study set out to answer?

This research aims to enhance the detection of road debris following earthquakes using advanced deep learning techniques.

June 1, 2026The international archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences/International archives of the photogrammetry, remote sensing and spatial information sciences0 citationsOpen Access

Comparative Analysis for Post-Earthquake Road Debris Detection Based on Deep Neural Networks Using High-resolution Remote Sensing Imagery

AEAydin ebrahimiK.N.Toosi University of Technology AMAli MohammadzadehK.N.Toosi University of Technology AMArmin MoghimiLeibniz University Hannover

Key Points

This research aims to enhance the detection of road debris following earthquakes using advanced deep learning techniques.
Evaluated three semantic segmentation models: Unet, Attention Unet (AttUnet), and ResUnet++ using high-resolution imagery.
Used datasets from the 2023 Osmaniye earthquake and the 2017 Sarpol-e Zahab earthquake for comparative analysis.
Assessed model performance with metrics: Intersection over Union (IoU), Recall, and Accuracy.
ResUnet++ outperformed Unet and AttUnet in debris detection across both datasets.
Osmaniye dataset: ResUnet++ achieved an IoU of 80.81%, Recall of 78.88%, and Accuracy of 96.12%.
Sarpol-e Zahab dataset: ResUnet++ achieved an IoU of 81.62%, Recall of 80.28%, and Accuracy of 97.24%.

Abstract

Abstract. Earthquakes can cause considerable damage to transportation infrastructure, affecting emergency response. Timely detection of road debris is important in such situations. The purpose of this research is to address the challenges related to the rapid detection of collapsed areas and road blockages. Deep learning has become an essential tool in remote sensing and image processing, offering improved capabilities for classification, and segmentation from high-resolution imagery. Its integration into post-disaster analysis enables more accurate assessments compared to traditional methods. This study examines the performance of three commonly used semantic segmentation models Unet, Attention Unet (AttUnet), and ResUnet++ for road debris detection. Two earthquake events were used as case studies: the 2023 earthquake in Osmaniye, Türkiye (Mw 7.8), captured by the Pleiades satellite, and the 2017 earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab, Kermanshah, Iran (Mw 7.3), captured by a Phantom 4 Pro drone. The models were evaluated using three metrics: Intersection over Union (IoU), Recall, and Accuracy. The results show that ResUnet++ achieved higher performance compared to Unet and AttUnet in both cases. For the Osmaniye dataset, ResUnet++ reached an IoU of 80.81%, Recall of 78.88%, and Accuracy of 96.12%. On the Sarpol-e Zahab dataset, it obtained an IoU of 81.62%, Recall of 80.28%, and Accuracy of 97.24%. Unet and AttUnet performed at lower levels across all evaluated metrics. This comparison provides a clear assessment of model performance in post-earthquake debris detection tasks and contributes to ongoing work in the application of deep learning and high-resolution imagery for geospatial analysis in disaster response contexts.

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