Rapid, reliable, and continuous information is an essential component in disaster monitoring and management. Remote sensing data could be a solution, but often cannot provide continuous data due to an absence of global coverage and weather and daylight dependency. To overcome these challenges, this study makes use of weather and day/light independent Sentinel-1 data with a global coverage to monitor localized effects of different types of disasters using the Coherence Change-Detection (CCD) technique. Coherence maps were generated from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and used to classify areas of change and no change in six study areas. These sites are located in Syria, Puerto Rico, California, and Iran. The study areas were divided into street blocks, and the standard deviation was calculated for the coherence images for each street block over entire image stacks. The study areas were classified by land-use type to reveal the spatial variation in coherence loss after a disaster. While temporal decorrelation exhibits a general loss in coherence over time, disaster occurrence, however, indicates a significant loss in coherence after an event. The variations of each street block from the average coherence for the entire image stack, as measured by a high standard deviation after a particular disaster, is an indication of disaster induced building damage.

Rice is a staple food for nearly half the world’s population. Therefore, rice yield estimation has far-reaching significance for food security. As the population continues to expand, rice is often in short supply. Timely and accurate data on rice production is crucial for governments and markets. Traditional rice yield estimation techniques cannot meet the current demand. With its ability to penetrate clouds and rain and the advantage of abundant remote sensing information, spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (S-SAR) can be used in the application of rice yield measurement. In this paper, the history and recent developments of rice yield measurement (1988-2018) based on spaceborne synthetic aperture radar are introduced, and the application prospect and technical development of rice yield monitoring are sought.