Abstract
Flooding is among the most common natural disasters in our planet and one of the main causes of economic and human life loss worldwide. Evidence suggests the increase of floods at European scale with the Mediterranean coast being critically vulnerable to this risk. The devastating event in the West Mediterranean during the second week of September 2019 is a clear case of this risk crystallization, when a record-breaking flood (locally called the “Cold Drop” (Gota Fría)) has swollen into a catastrophe to the southeast of Spain surpassing previous all-time records. By using a straightforward approach with the Sentinel-2 twin satellites from the Copernicus Programme and the ACOLITE atmospheric correction processor, an initial approximation of the delineated flooded zones, including agriculture and urban areas, was accomplished in quasi-real time. The robust and flexible approach requires no ancillary data for rapid implementation. A composite of pre- and post-flood images was obtained to identify change detection and mask water pixels. Sentinel-2 identifies not only impacts on land but also on water ecosystem and its services, providing information on water quality deterioration and concentration of suspended matter in highly sensitive environments. Subsequent water quality deterioration occurred in large portions of Mar Menor, the largest coastal lagoon in the Mediterranean. The present study demonstrates the potentials brought by the free and open-data policy of Sentinel-2, a valuable source of rapid synoptic spatio-temporal information at the local or regional scale to support scientists, managers, stakeholders, and society in general during and after the emergency.
Highlights
Flooding is among the most common natural disasters in our planet and one of the main causes of economic and human life loss worldwide [1]
Alcázares region (Figure 4b), where the exceptional rainfall caused widespread flooding and damage in Los Alcázares region (Figure 4b), where the exceptional rainfall caused widespread flooding and to agricultural lands, much of them farmed under agri-environment agreements.agreements
In the event of a natural disaster, as the recent catastrophic flooding event occurred in Spain during the second week of September 2019, the Sentinel-2 fleet is a valuable rapid-response source of synoptic spatio-temporal information, and its benefit has been proven here
Summary
Flooding is among the most common natural disasters in our planet and one of the main causes of economic and human life loss worldwide [1]. The frequency and scale of floods are likely to increase in decades due to climate-related extremes and natural hazards and because ongoing socio-economic development [3]. Several studies of river floods and storms in Europe suggested that the observed increases in losses were principally due to economic wealth, increases in populations, and developments in hazard-prone areas, but the increase in heavy precipitation in some regions of Europe may have influenced these [4,5]. Human activity is undoubtedly contributing to an increase in the likelihood and adverse impacts of extreme flood events.
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