Sentinel-1 and -2 Based near Real Time Inland Excess Water Mapping for Optimized Water Management

Abstract

Changing climate is expected to cause more extreme weather patterns in many parts of the world. In the Carpathian Basin, it is expected that the frequency of intensive precipitation will increase causing inland excess water (IEW) in parts of the plains more frequently, while currently the phenomenon already causes great damage. This research presents and validates a new methodology to determine the extent of these floods using a combination of passive and active remote sensing data. The method can be used to monitor IEW over large areas in a fully automated way based on freely available Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 remote sensing imagery. The method is validated for two IEW periods in 2016 and 2018 using high-resolution optical satellite data and aerial photographs. Compared to earlier remote sensing data-based methods, our method can be applied under unfavorite weather conditions, does not need human interaction and gives accurate results for inundations larger than 1000 m2. The overall accuracy of the classification exceeds 99%; however, smaller IEW patches are underestimated due to the spatial resolution of the input data. Knowledge on the location and duration of the inundations helps to take operational measures against the water but is also required to determine the possibilities for storage of water for dry periods. The frequent monitoring of the floods supports sustainable water management in the area better than the methods currently employed.