Flood Damage Area Detection Method by Means of Coherency Derived from Interferometric SAR Analysis with Sentinel-A SAR

Abstract

Flood damage area detection method by means of coherency derived from interferometric SAR analysis with Sentinel-A SAR is proposed. One of the key issues for flooding area detection is to estimate it as soon as possible. The flooding area due to heavy rain, typhoon, severe storm, however, is usually covered with clouds. Therefore, it is not easy to detect with optical imagers onboard remote sensing satellite. On the other hand, Synthetic Aperture Radar: SAR onboard remote sensing satellites allows to observe the flooding area even if it is cloudy and rainy weather conditions. Usually, flooding area shows relatively small back scattering cross section due to the fact that return signal from the water surface is quite small because of dielectric loss. It, however, is not clear enough of the flooding area detected by using return signal of SAR data from the water surface. The proposed method uses coherency derived from interferometric SAR analysis. Through experiment, it is found that the proposed method is useful to detect the flooding area clearly.