Long-term temporal analysis of Sentinel-2 spectral reflectance data for post-earthquake monitoring of urban environment dynamics

Post-disaster analysis poses a significant challenge in Disaster Risk Management during the recovery phase. This study explores the advantages of multispectral images from Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission for evaluating long-term urban changes and monitoring post-earthquake reconstruction progress. The innovative methodology focuses on assessing changes in urban areas and buildings, following seismic events. It relies on analyzing extended time series of spectral reflectance values in the Red–Green–Blue (RGB) bands, resulting in Perceived Lightness (PL) values and incorporates the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). This approach, applied in two cities of the Central Italy (L’Aquila and Amatrice) affected by earthquake, proves effective and reproducible, offering the distinct advantage of freely available and regularly accessible Sentinel-2 observations on a broad scale, in contrast to commercial Very High Resolution (VHR) images. Leveraging a rich set of multispectral data, this research provides valuable insights into urban dynamics, facilitating informed decision-making in post-disaster scenarios, for a scientific based datasets for monitoring urban reconstruction planning and supporting sustainable urban development programmatic.