FloodMan - flood forecasting, warning and management system

Floods cause large economical losses in many parts of Europe and a lot of people have lost their lives. Among the 100 most expensive natural disasters of the 20th Century, the damage of floods contribute 40% of total amount of loss (including earthquakes , typhoons, storms, fires etc.) which was estimated 680 billion Euro.

Operational flood management and planning of flood protective structures require detailed spatial and temporal information of inundation when flooding is active or in different design flood conditions.

Spaceborne sensors produce valuable information for environmental monitoring and forecasting purposes at different spatial and temporal scale. Due to the high spatial and temporal coverage, satellites have a clear advantage compared to any other source of information. However, during extreme event such as flooding data, from optical sensors are limited by cloud cover. Several studies have documented the potential of using spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) systems which provide information independent of light and weather conditions as a tool for flood monitoring. In recent years, the achievements in information and communication technology has made it possible to acquire, process and distribute information derived from radar satellite to the end users in near real time (hours after the area of interest has been imaged by the sensor). However, spaceborne SAR data for operational near real time monitoring of flood area has not been exploited.