Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management - ISPRS

Space Technology Application for
Wenchuan Earthquake Relief
AIntroduction
Suju Li, Yida Fan, Siquan Yang, Lei Wang
National Disaster Reduction Center of China (NDRCC);
lisuju@ndrcc.gov.cn
An earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 on the
Richter scale struck Wenchuan County, Sichuan
Province, China at 14:28 CST (06:28 UTC), on May
12, 2008, and known as the Wenchuan Earthquake.
The location of the epicentre (31.021N, 103.367E)
was at Yingxiu (Fig1), a small town in Wenchuan
County, which is located in the earthquake zone in
China. The most affected areas were distributed
along the southwest to northeast directions from the
epicentre.
The earthquake was the most destructive
experienced since the People's Republic of China was
founded in 1949.
Figure 1: Unmanned airplane image of the
Yingxiu town in the Wenchuan County , Sichuan
Province taken on May 14th,2008 by NDRCC
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