Assessing the Impact of Hurricane Hugo on Coastal South Carolina through Digital Image Change Detection

The coastal regions of the world are highly dynamic. Physical processes coupled with human activities constantly produce both positive and negative impacts. The detection of these impacts is important to an understanding of the processes themselves. Most of these impacts take several years to detect, but in a short-term event like a hurricane, they can happen in a matter of a few hours. This paper illustrates the utility of digital-image change-detection techniques in assessing the physical impacts of hurricanes on coastal areas. Four change-detection techniques were used to detect the effects of Hurricane Hugo's landfall near Charleston, South Carolina. The results of the comparisons indicate that no single change-detection technique locates all modifications. However, when the digital techniques are combined with the visual "heads-up" technique, a more detailed and comprehensive assessment of change to the coastal region is attained.