Rapid monitoring of cyclone induced flood through an automated approach using multi–temporal Earth Observation (EO) images in RSS CloudToolbox platform

Abstract

The new era of cloud platform technologies opens up many opportunities for near real-time dissemination of disaster information to the end-users. The present study utilizes the European Space Agency (ESA) Research and Service Support (RSS) CloudToolbox platform to monitor the spatio-temporal dynamics of a flood event. A collective flood monitoring framework is formulated to rapidly assess cyclone-induced flood in the CloudToolbox platform. The outputs of the framework are spatio-temporal maps of flood extent, depth, and hot spot zones. The framework utilizes Earth Observation (EO) images such as optical and C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and an automatic Kittler and Illingworth thresholding algorithm for rapid flood mapping. The temporal flood depth maps are created with the Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool (FwDET) which requires only two input parameters, viz. flood extent, and Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Subsequently, flood hotspot zones are also identified. We tested the flood monitoring framework on Amphan cyclone-induced flood event at both regional and local levels. The spatio-temporal flood extent, depth, and hot spot maps are generated for the Amphan cyclone event and a 97% overall accuracy is achieved at the local level. The entire process took less than one hour for regional and local level analysis.

Keywords

• cyclone monitoring
• sentinel-1
• gpm imerg
• kittler & illingworth
• hot spots
• flood mapping