Abstract
AbstractThe repetitive and destructive nature of floods across the globe causes significant economic damage, loss of human lives, and leaves the people living in flood-prone areas with fear and insecurity. With enough literature projecting an increase in flood frequency, severity, and magnitude in the future, there is a clear need for effective flood management strategies and timely implementation. The earth observatory satellites of the European Space Agency’s Sentinel series, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-3, have a great potential to combat these disastrous floods by their peerless surveillance capabilities that could assist in various phases of flood management. In this article, the technical specifications and operations of the microwave synthetic aperture radar (SAR) onboard Sentinel-1, optical sensors onboard Sentinel-2 (Multispectral Instrument) and Sentinel-3 (Ocean and Land Color Instrument), and SAR altimeter onboard Sentinel-3 are described. Moreover, the observational capabilities of these three satellites and how these observations can meet the needs of researchers and flood disaster managers are discussed in detail. Furthermore, we reviewed how these satellites carrying a range of technologies that provide a broad spectrum of earth observations stand out among their predecessors and have bought a step-change in flood monitoring, understanding, and management to mitigate their adverse effects. Finally, the study is concluded by highlighting the revolution this fleet of Sentinel satellites has brought in the flood management studies and applications.
Highlights
The repetitive and destructive nature of floods across the globe causes significant economic damage, loss of human lives, and leaves the people living in flood-prone areas with fear and insecurity
The fleet of Sentinel satellites began a new era in remote sensing technology by bringing a paradigm shift in the quality and quantity of Earth observations
For the first time in history, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and Sentinel-3 satellites, under a single program (Copernicus), serving as a unified system carrying a range of state-of-the-art technologies for providing broad spectrum of earth observations globally and became a one-stop solution for most of the informational requirements in flood management as discussed in Sections 4, 5 and 6
Summary
Abstract: The repetitive and destructive nature of floods across the globe causes significant economic damage, loss of human lives, and leaves the people living in flood-prone areas with fear and insecurity. The changing climate and human-induced global warming may not instigate floods directly Still, they affect several variables that trigger floods such as precipitation, sealevel rise, increase in temperature, the intensity and the range of cyclones, snow melt, glacial retreat [2], which would eventually lead to continuing the increasing trend of the number of flood events in a year and their associated damage. It will be an expensive and tedious task even for limited spatial coverage, making it unreliable for flood management and hindering research and applications in this field.
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