Flood monitoring and forecasting using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and meteorological data: A case study

Availability of several space-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) missions has widened the scope of utilizing radar images for monitoring flooded areas. In this paper, the capability of SAR data was investigated to assess and map flooded regions in Sylhet, located in the northeast part of Bangladesh. Co-polarized (VV) Satellite imageries from 2017 have been collected from Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-1B to use in this study. Relative Humidity (RH), Soil moisture and the amount of precipitation data have been used to predict spatiotemporal inundation in Sylhet region. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was implemented to forecast the runoff directions of water from mountain after heavy rainfalls in Sylhet region. Results of this study indicated that temporal flood prediction errors could be minimized especially for shorter lead times and overall, they showed the applicability of SAR which in combination with images from SAR, DEM and meteorological data that could be exploited to monitor the flooded areas and give better forecasts.