Rapid Extreme Tropical Precipitation and Flood Inundation Mapping Framework (RETRACE): Initial Testing for the 2021–2022 Malaysia Flood

Abstract

The 2021–2022 flood is one of the most serious flood events in Malaysian history, with approximately 70,000 victims evacuated daily, 54 killed and total losses up to MYR 6.1 billion. From this devastating event, we realized the lack of extreme precipitation and flood inundation information, which is a common problem in tropical regions. Therefore, we developed a Rapid Extreme TRopicAl preCipitation and flood inundation mapping framEwork (RETRACE) by utilizing: (1) a cloud computing platform, the Google Earth Engine (GEE); (2) open-source satellite images from missions such as Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM), Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 optical satellites; and (3) flood victim information. The framework was demonstrated with the 2021–2022 Malaysia flood. The preliminary results were satisfactory with an optimal threshold of five for flood inundation mapping using the Sentinel-1 SAR data, as the accuracy of inundated floods was up to 70%. Extreme daily precipitation of up to 230 mm/day was observed and resulted in an inundated area of 77.43 km2 in Peninsular Malaysia. This framework can act as a useful tool for local authorities and scientists to retrace the extreme precipitation and flood information in a relatively short period for flood management and mitigation strategy development.