Information of houses collapsed by the earthquake is one of the important indicators to assess the earthquake dam- age intensity

and support the emergency decision-making process in rescue and recovery operations. We monitored the house collapse ratio and its spatial variation in the 5.12 Wenchuan earthquake by airborne images

and analyzed its spatial variation relationship with the earthquake intensity

geological structure

stratum lithology and surface rupture caused by the earthquake. The house collapse ratio was derived by visually interpreting ADS40 airborne images acquired from May 15 to May 28

2008. The results show that the houses were widely damaged in the earthquake-damaged region

especially in Wenchuan County

Mianzhu City

Shifang City

and Pengzhou City and Wenchuan County which experienced the severest damage. We analyzed the spatial variation of the house collapse ratio and its relationship with earthquake intensity

geological structure

stratum lithology and surface rupture caused by earthquake. The results demonstrate that the house collapse ratio and the earthquake intensity have positive relationship

and the ratio of house collapse is controlled by the geological structure

stratum lithology

and building structure too. The house collapse ratios

which are above 50%

mainly distributed along the surface rupture in a SW to NE direction.