Flood depth estimation by means of high-resolution SAR images and lidar data

When floods hit inhabited areas, great losses are usually registered in terms of both impacts on people (i.e., fatalities and injuries) and economic impacts on urban areas, commercial and productive sites, infrastructures, and agriculture. To properly assess these, several parameters are needed, amo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNatural hazards and earth system sciences Vol. 18; no. 11; pp. 3063 - 3084
Main Authors Cian, Fabio, Marconcini, Mattia, Ceccato, Pietro, Giupponi, Carlo
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Katlenburg-Lindau Copernicus GmbH 19.11.2018
Copernicus Publications
Subjects
Agriculture
Analysis
Change detection
Depth
Detection
Digital Elevation Models
Digital imaging
Economic impact
Economic models
Economics
Elevation
Flooded areas
Floods
High resolution
Hydrodynamic models
Hydrodynamics
Image resolution
Lidar
Quality assessment
Quality control
Radar
Radar imagery
Radar imaging
Resolution
SAR (radar)
Statistical analysis
Statistical methods
Synthetic aperture radar
Urban areas
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Summary:When floods hit inhabited areas, great losses are usually registered in terms of both impacts on people (i.e., fatalities and injuries) and economic impacts on urban areas, commercial and productive sites, infrastructures, and agriculture. To properly assess these, several parameters are needed, among which flood depth is one of the most important as it governs the models used to compute damages in economic terms. This paper presents a simple yet effective semiautomatic approach for deriving very precise inundation depth. First, precise flood extent is derived employing a change detection approach based on the normalized difference flood index computed from high-resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery. Second, by means of a high-resolution lidar digital elevation model, water surface elevation is estimated through a statistical analysis of terrain elevation along the boundary lines of the identified flooded areas. Experimental results and quality assessment are given for the flood that occurred in the Veneto region, northeastern Italy, in 2010. In particular, the method proved fast and robust and, compared to hydrodynamic models, it requires sensibly less input information.
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ISSN:1684-9981
1561-8633
1684-9981
DOI:10.5194/nhess-18-3063-2018