Assessing risk and damage from natural and man-made disaster may be a very expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes even dangerous task. Earth Observation from spaceborne or airborne platforms is an effective means of collecting data over large areas and turning these data into information concerning exposure, vulnerability, damage and reconstruction progress. In the figure below a typical example is displayed, with seismic damage levels estimated from radar data statistics over each single urban block in a city stricken by an earthquake.