ExtractEO, a Pipeline for Disaster Extent Mapping in the Context of Emergency Management

Abstract

Rapid mapping of disasters using any kind of satellite imagery is a challenge. The faster the response, the better the service is for the end users who are managing the emergency activities. Indeed, production rapidity is crucial whatever the satellite data in input. However, the speed of delivery must not be at the expense of crisis information quality. The automated flood and fire extraction pipelines, presented in this technical note, make it possible to take full advantage of advanced algorithms in short timeframes, and leave enough time for an expert operator to validate the results and correct any unmanaged thematic errors. Although automated algorithms aren’t flawless, they greatly facilitate and accelerate the detection and mapping of crisis information, especially for floods and fires. ExtractEO is a pipeline developed by SERTIT and dedicated to disaster mapping. It brings together automatic data download and pre-processing, along with highly accurate flood and fire detection chains. Indeed, the thematic quality assessment revealed F1-score values of 0.91 and 0.88 for burnt area and flooded area detection, respectively, from various kinds of high- and very-high- resolution data (optical and SAR).