Integration of SAR-derived river inundation areas, high-precision topographic data and a river flow model toward near real-time flood management

Since several space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments providing high spatial resolutions and multi-polarisation capabilities will be mounted on satellites to be launched from 2006 onwards, radar imagery promises to become an indispensable asset for many environmental monitoring applications. Due to its all weather, day and night capabilities, SAR imagery presents obvious advantages over optical instruments, especially in flood management applications. To date, however, the coarse spatial resolution of available SAR datasets restricts the information that can be reliably extracted and processing techniques tend to be limited to binary floodplain segmentation into ‘flooded’ and ‘non flooded’ areas. It is the purpose of this paper to further improve the exploitation of SAR images in hydraulic modelling and near real-time crisis management by means of developing image processing methodologies that allow for the extraction of water levels at any point of the floodplain. As high-precision digital elevation models (DEM) produced, for instance, from airborne laser scanning become more readily available, methods can be exploited that combine SAR-derived flood extent maps and precise topographic data for retrieving water depth maps. In a case study of a well-documented flood event in January 2003 on the River Alzette, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a root mean squared error (R.M.S.E.) of 41 cm was obtained by comparing the SAR-derived water heights with surveyed high water marks that were collected during image acquisition. Water levels that were computed by a previously calibrated hydraulic model also suggest that the water surface profiles provided by the combined use of topographic data and SAR accurately reflect the true water line. The extraction of flooded areas within vegetated areas further demonstrates the usefulness of the proposed methodology.