Satellite Flood Inundation Assessment and Forecast Using SMAP and Landsat

IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing

Hylke E. Beck¹  Ming Pan¹  Eric F. Wood¹  John S. Kimball²  Jinyang Du²  Colby K. Fisher³  Justin Sheffield⁴ 

[1] Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA;Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA;Princeton Climate Analytics, Princeton, NJ, USA;School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.;

关键词: Flood;    Global Forecast System (GFS);    Google Earth Engine (GEE);    Landsat;    Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP);   

DOI  :  10.1109/JSTARS.2021.3092340

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The capability and synergistic use of multisource satellite observations for flood monitoring and forecasts is crucial for improving disaster preparedness and mitigation. Here, surface fractional water cover (FW) retrievals derived from Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) L-band (1.4 GHz) brightness temperatures were used for flood assessment over southeast Africa during the Cyclone Idai event. We then focused on five subcatchments of the Pungwe basin and developed a machine learning based approach with the support of Google Earth Engine for daily (24-h) forecasting of FW and 30-m inundation downscaling and mapping. The Classification and Regression Trees model was selected and trained using retrievals derived from SMAP and Landsat coupled with rainfall forecasts from the NOAA Global Forecast System. Independent validation showed that FW predictions over randomly selected dates are highly correlated (R = 0.87) with the Landsat observations. The forecast results captured the flood temporal dynamics from the Idai event; and the associated 30-m downscaling results showed inundation spatial patterns consistent with independent satellite synthetic aperture radar observations. The data-driven approach provides new capacity for flood monitoring and forecasts leveraging synergistic satellite observations and big data analysis, which is particularly valuable for data sparse regions.

【 授权许可】

Unknown