Flood Mapping Tool User Guide

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Flood mapping tool (FMT) is the first tool released as part of the Web-based Spatial Decision Support System (WSDSS) to address flood-related information gaps in the currently available flood early warning and risk management systems. The FMT generates inundation maps for significant floods from 1984 till the present using open Earth data. The tool applies a water classification algorithm to 'stacks' of historical satellite imagery derived from Landsat to reveal inundation patterns over space and time. FMT is a hindcast tool that allows impacts of inundation on various socio-economic sectors to be analyzed.

There are three sections in this guide

  1. Interface overview
  2. Flood mapping tool operation
  3. Acknowledgements and further reading

Interface overview




Flood mapping tool operation

1. Browse to https://floodmapping.inweh.unu.edu/ to access the tool.



2. On the pop-up, Click Close to enable the controls on the options panel



3. On the options panel, go to the Select country option.



4. Select country and Click OK. The map will zoom to the selected country.



5.On the map, click on the grid boundary to select the area of interest. The boundary color of the selected grid cell will change from black to white.



6.Select the start date and end date on the options panel to set the flood event duration.

Add 30-45 days to the start date before the flood event and another 30-45 days to the end date after the flood events. This will help the flood mapping algorithm to pick up inundated areas with better accuracy



7. On the options panel, Click update map to view inundated areas.



8. On the options panel, Click Checkboxes to turn on the population layer and the LULC layers, use the sliders to adjust the transparency.



9. On the options panel, click the Download button to download the inundation map as a GeoTIFF file. When promoted, enter your Gmail email address. You will receive an email with the link to the Google Drive folder where you can download the GeoTIFF file.



10. Use the Toggle button on the options panel to enable 3D view (hold CTRL when clicking and dragging to tilt and rotate the map)






Acknowledgments and further reading


Acknowledgments:

This research is supported by the funds received by UNU-INWEH through the long-term agreement with Global Affairs Canada. The year 2021 marks the 25-th anniversary of UNU-INWEH.

Developers:

Hamid Mehmood, Duminda Perera, Sami Kurani, and Crystal Conway

Further reading:

Mapping of Flood Areas Using Landsat with Google Earth Engine Cloud Platform

A 30 m Resolution Surface Water Mask Including Estimation of Positional and Thematic Differences Using Landsat 8, SRTM and OpenStreetMap: A Case Study in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes

Enhancing Resilience to Flood Disasters Through the Use of AI, Cloud Computing, and Open Datasets

Flood mapping tool (FMT) is the first tool released as part of the Web-based Spatial Decision Support System (WSDSS) to address flood-related information gaps in the currently available flood early warning and risk management systems. The WSDSS comprises FMT and a flood risk prediction tool (FRPT).

The FMT generates inundation maps for significant floods from 1984 till the present using open Earth data. The tool applies a water classification algorithm to 'stacks' of historical satellite imagery derived from Landsat to reveal inundation patterns over space and time. FMT is a hindcast tool that allows impacts of inundation on various socio-economic sectors to be analyzed.

The FRPT to be released in 2022 will use AI models to generate current and future flood risk maps for three climate change scenarios at the city, district, and river basin levels. The AI models will be trained using the inundation maps generated by the FMT and open datasets, including land use, land cover, precipitation, temperature, gender, and age-disaggregated socio-economic data.

WSDSS will improve the spatial and temporal coverage of national and regional flood early warning and risk management systems and enhance the spatial resolution of the outputs WSDSS will build the capacity of flood forecasting centers in Global South to use AI models, big data and, cloud computing to analyze the impacts of climate change.

Benefits of using WSDSS:

WSDSS will differ from the available systems in a number of ways; it will:

Acknowledgments:

Partners:

UN Partners: UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Centre for South Asia Water Management Sri Lanka
Government: Water Resources Research and Development Centre Nepal and Directorate of Planning, Bangladesh
Private Sector: Google and MapBox
Research Centers: Asian Disaster Preparedness Center Thailand and Network of Disaster Management Practitioners Pakistan
Academia: McMaster University Canada and International Institute of Information Technology India

Contact:

hamid.mehmood@unu.edu

Further reading:

Mapping of Flood Areas Using Landsat with Google Earth Engine Cloud Platform

A 30 m Resolution Surface Water Mask Including Estimation of Positional and Thematic Differences Using Landsat 8, SRTM and OpenStreetMap: A Case Study in the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia

High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes

Flood Mapping Tool
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Add 30-45 days to the start date before the flood event

Start date

Add 30-45 days to the end date after the flood event

End date

Click checkboxes to turn on/off the water, population and the LULC layers, use the sliders to adjust the transparency.

Layer Control

Water
Population
LULC
Month:

Enter Gmail Address


Legend

Water
Permanent Water Body
Inundated Area
Population

100 m * 100 m

> 100
50 - 100
25 - 50
10 - 25
5 - 10
2 - 5
< 2
LULC
Unknown. No or not enough satellite data available.
Shrubs. Woody perennial plants.
Herbaceous vegetation.
Cultivated and managed vegetation / agriculture.
Urban / built up. Land covered by buildings and other man-made structures.
Bare / sparse vegetation. Lands with exposed soil, sand, or rocks.
Snow and ice. Lands under snow or ice cover throughout the year.
Permanent water bodies. Lakes, reservoirs, and rivers.
Herbaceous wetland. Lands with a permanent mixture of water and herbaceous or woody vegetation.
Moss and lichen.
Closed forest, evergreen needle leaf.
Closed forest, evergreen broad leaf.
Closed forest, deciduous needle leaf.
Closed forest, deciduous broad leaf.
Closed forest, mixed.
Closed forest, not matching any of the other definitions.
Open forest, evergreen needle leaf.
Open forest, evergreen broad leaf.
Open forest, deciduous needle leaf.
Open forest, deciduous broad leaf.
Open forest, mixed.
Open forest, not matching any of the other definitions.
Oceans, seas. Can be either fresh or salt-water bodies.
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