Automatic flood duration estimation based on multi-sensor satellite data

Kurzfassung

Flood duration is a crucial parameter for disaster impact assessment as it can directly influence the degree of economic losses and damage to structures. It also provides an indication of the spatio-temporal persistence and the evolution of inundation events. Thus, it helps gain a better understanding of hydrological conditions and surface water availability and provides valuable insights for land-use planning. The objective of this work is to develop an automatic procedure to estimate flood duration and the uncertainty associated with the use of multi-temporal flood extent masks upon which the procedure is based. To ensure sufficiently high observation frequencies, data from multiple satellites, namely Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, Landsat-8 and TerraSAR-X, are analyzed. Satellite image processing and analysis is carried out in near real-time with an integrated system of dedicated processing chains for the delineation of flood extents from the range of aforementioned sensors. The skill of the proposed method to support satellite-based emergency mapping activities is demonstrated on two cases, namely the 2019 flood in Sofala, Mozambique and the 2017 flood in Bihar, India.