Author(s): Oscar Ruiz Lozano; Javier Mª Sanchez Espeso; Cesar Alvarez Diaz

Linked Author(s): Oscar Ruiz Lozano

Keywords: Flood; Remote sensing; SRTM; ALOS PALSAR

Abstract: Remote sensing is a challenging field with continuous development in recent times. This technology is widely used, although not so much within Civil Engineering, especially since the launch of Sentinel Constellation by the European Space Agency. The purpose of this study is to use remote sensing to collaborate in the improvement of flood studies carried out using low-precision cartography, in this case, the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) produced by ASTER, SRTM, and ALOS PALSAR space missions, by increasing the reliability of cartography. The article will show how to obtain the river channel, analyzing the entire series of images from Sentinel – 2 by remote sensing, how to use remote sensing to detect mistakes in the low-precision cartography and correct these errors. On the other hand, a secondary result of the DEM analysis is to get a view of the best of low-precision cartographies with a focus on the flooding analysis. The DEMs have been used in 2D flooding simulations of the rivers Gállego, Arga, and Deva in Spain as a testing bench. The flooding areas obtained by simulation with low-resolution DEMS have been compared with the official flooding areas to get the accuracy of using this low-precision cartography in flooding estimations. Where official flooding areas are not available, the low-resolution DEM flooding areas have been compared with the flooding areas estimated by simulation over lidar cartography. The IBER simulation model, ArcGIS software, Python, and free libraries like GDAL, OTB, NumPy, or Tensorflow are used to develop the algorithms, simulations, and comparations.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/IAHR-39WC2521711920221088

Year: 2022