Venezuela Earthquakes Damage Assessment Using Sentinel-1 Radar Data

A preliminary damage proxy product from July 2026 estimates 81,437 likely damaged buildings across the broader impacted area of the 24 June 2026 Venezuelan earthquakes. The REACH Initiative created this rapid experimental assessment using Sentinel-1 radar data and Overture Maps building footprints. It is intended to support rapid screening, prioritization, and triangulation with other damage assessments.

Use Cases

• Prioritize ground-based damage assessment teams based on the identified likely damaged building footprints.
• Triangulate damage estimates by overlaying this Sentinel-1 radar analysis with very-high-resolution optical imagery.
• Screen the broader impacted area for rapid damage assessment and resource allocation planning.
• Support other damage assessment products by providing a preliminary, satellite-based damage proxy layer.

Strengths

• Provides a specific damage estimate of 81,437 likely damaged buildings.
• Covers the entire analyzed impacted area from the June 2026 earthquakes.
• Includes both the full SAR analysis area and the identified damaged building footprints as separate data layers.
• Available in multiple geospatial formats (GEOPACKAGE, GEOJSON, SHP).

Limitations

• The product is described as preliminary and experimental.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

REACH Initiative

Collection Method

Analysis of Sentinel-1 radar data combined with Overture Maps building footprints.

Time Range

Analysis pertains to the 24 June 2026 earthquake event.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-06 11:53:34.744067

Geography

Broader impacted area of the Venezuelan earthquakes.