Study of Flood Extent with Remote Sensing

By Argilli Lydia | Wed, 2 Feb 2011 - 09:43
China

 

Flooding happens mostly over the coastal region or low-lying land. It threatens the life of inhabitants, in addition to their property losses. Usually, the boundary of flooded region is determined with on site investigation, which is very difficult during flooding and even endangers the safety of field investigators. For a case of major flooding, on site investigation may take too many human and material resources before timely completion. Therefore, satellite remote sensing is a potential alternative for a fast and large-scale survey of flood region.

This study of delimiting the flood extent is through analyzing satellite images that were taken at different dates. For the case of flooding at Gangshan area after the typhoon Doug, we compared the satellite analysis against on site investigation and found that the extent of flooding matches each other. This result proves that satellite remote sensing is a viable method for quickly delimiting the extent of flooding.

Leu, L-G. & Wu, R-M. (2002): Study of Flood Extent with Remote Sensing. Proceedings of the 9th Workshop of OMISAR (WOM-9) on the Application and Networking of Satellite Data, November 1-3, 2002.

Li-Guang Leu
Ren-Ming Wu