Flood Analysis Using Multi-Scale Remote Sensing Observations in Laos

Abstract

Heavy rains usually hit Laos countrywide and cause serious floods, influencing local agriculture, households, and the economy. Therefore, it is crucial to monitor the flooding in Laos to better understand the flood patterns and characteristics. This paper aims to analyze the influence of the flooding in Laos with multi-source data, e.g., Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), optical multi-spectral images, and geographic information system data. First, the flood areas in Laos from 2018 to 2022 are detected using a decision fusion method. Based on the flood areas and the global Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) product, the macro scale global impact of the flood is analyzed. Second, taking the Vientiane Capital as a case study area, a flood forecasting method is applied to estimate the risk of flooding. Finally, optical images before and after the flood event are extracted for a close-up comparison at the micro scale. Based on the above multi-scale analysis, floods in Laos are found to be predominantly concentrated in the flat areas near the Mekong River, with a decreasing trend over time, which could be helpful for flood management and mitigation strategies in Laos. The validation results exhibited notable average indices across a five-year period, with mIoU (0.7782), F1 score (0.7255), and overall accuracy (0.9854), respectively.