IN31D-05
On the value of satellite-based river discharge and river flood data

Wednesday, 16 December 2015: 09:00
2020 (Moscone West)
Albert J Kettner, University of Colorado at Boulder, CSDMS/INSTAAR, Boulder, CO, United States, Robert Brakenridge, University of Colorado, CSDMS, Boulder, CO, United States, Eric van Praag, Environmental Systems Research Institute, Redlands, CA, United States, Santiago Borrero, Development Bank for Latin America, Bogota, Colombia, Daniel A Slayback, Science Systems and Applications, Inc., Lanham, MD, United States, Claudia Young, Innovate, Inc., contractor to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resources Observation & Science (EROS) Center, Sioux Falls, SD, United States, Sagy Cohen, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, United States, Lara Prades, World Food Programme (WFP), Rome, Italy and Tom de Groeve, Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy
Abstract:
Flooding is the most common natural hazard worldwide. According to the World Resources Institute, floods impact 21 million people every year and affect the global GDP by $96 billion. Providing accurate flood maps in near-real time (NRT) is critical to their utility to first responders. Also, in times of flooding, river gauging stations on location, if any, are of less use to monitor stage height as an approximation for water surface area, as often the stations themselves get washed out or peak water levels reach much beyond their design measuring capacity.

In a joint effort with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the European Commission Joint Research Centre and the University of Alabama, the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) measures NRT: 1) river discharges, and 2) water inundation extents, both with a global coverage on a daily basis. Satellite-based passive microwave sensors and hydrological modeling are utilized to establish ‘remote-sensing based discharge stations’. Once calibrated, daily discharge time series span from 1998 to the present. Also, the two MODIS instruments aboard the NASA Terra and Aqua satellites provide daily floodplain inundation extent with global coverage at a spatial resolution of 250m.

DFO’s mission is to provide easy access to NRT river and flood data products. Apart from the DFO web portal, several water extent products can be ingested by utilizing a Web Map Service (WMS), such as is established with for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region through the GeoSUR program portal. This effort includes implementing over 100 satellite discharge stations showing in NRT if a river is flooding, normal, or in low flow.

New collaborative efforts have resulted in flood hazard maps which display flood extent as well as exceedance probabilities. The record length of our sensors allows mapping the 1.5 year, 5 year and 25 year flood extent. These can provide key information to water management and disaster response entities.

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