Methods

Due to the rather focused nature of our project, most of the imagery used to examine damage done by the tsunami was obtained through Google Earth. By using Geographic-Link between the before, during, and after images in ENVI, we could easily asses where the most damage was done in our target area. From that point, the images were moved into ArcGIS to create polygons expressing the heaviest areas of damage to make finding these locations easier for the viewers. This also allowed us to overlay the same polygons on the before and after images, to show a much more focused impact on the areas that suffered the greatest impacts, and what the exact same places looked like prior to the flooding. ArcGIS was also used to render picture in picture frames, to allow us to demonstrate where exactly our study area was and how we chose to analyze it.

Similar to this, we also used NightLight images to show differences in the power networks of Japan before and after the tsunami. With these NightLight images, we were also able to use change detection algorithms in ENVI to establish what areas in Japan were affected most from this disaster and suffered blackouts as such. This change detection was also used to help pinpoint exactly the areas of our study area that were outlined using ArcGIS.