Abstract
The Earth Observation (EO) domain can provide valuable information products that can significantly reduce the cost of mapping flood extent and improve the accuracy of mapping and monitoring systems. In this study, Landsat 5, 7, and 8 were utilized to map flood inundation areas. Google Earth Engine (GEE) was used to implement Flood Mapping Algorithm (FMA) and process the Landsat data. FMA relies on developing a “data cube”, which is spatially overlapped pixels of Landsat 5, 7, and 8 imagery captured over a period of time. This data cube is used to identify temporary and permanent water bodies using the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) and site-specific elevation and land use data. The results were assessed by calculating a confusion matrix for nine flood events spread over the globe. The FMA had a high true positive accuracy ranging from 71–90% and overall accuracy in the range of 74–89%. In short, observations from FMA in GEE can be used as a rapid and robust hindsight tool for mapping flood inundation areas, training AI models, and enhancing existing efforts towards flood mitigation, monitoring, and management.
Highlights
We present an innovative Flood Mapping Algorithm (FMA), which harnesses the power of cloud computing (GEE) Earth Observation (EO) data (Landsat) to generate historical global flood inundation extents at 30 m resolution
The FMA relies on developing a “data cube”, a stack of spatially overlapped pixels of Landsat 5, 7, and 8 imagery captured over time
The reference flood extent is shown in red, permanent water bodies in the dark blue, and flood inundation extent mapped by FMA in light blue
Summary
Academic Editors: Toan Trinh, Van. Thinh Nguyen and Shuichi Kure. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Water-Related Disasters (WRD), such as cyclones, floods, and droughts, account for. Since the year 2000, over 5300 WRD have been reported, with over 325,000 fatalities and an economic loss exceeding USD 1.7 trillion globally [1]. Floods account for approximately 54% of all WRD [2]. Since the beginning of 2020, in South Asia alone, floods impacted over 17.5 M people, caused over 1000 deaths, and an economic loss of billions of dollars [3]
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