Identification of flood prone areas using satellites

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​06 June 18Inundated land can be a blessing or a curse. In the case of irrigated agriculture, controlled inundation is wanted and needed to maximize productivity of the land. Floods are among the world's most common and most damaging natural hazards. Therefore, inundation mapping can help to identify flood prone areas and irrigated (crop) areas. Identification of flood prone areas can help disaster relief organisations focus on areas most affected by floods. Flood information data is also used in planning and decision making of engineering projects. Identification of irrigated areas, in combination with other geodata products such as agricultural maps, can help decision makers answer essential questions like: 'Which areas have a higher agricultural production and why?' Or, 'which areas of (potential) future investment have a high flood risk?'.

For Myanmar specifically, Satelligence processed over 1200 Sentinel-1 images (2017) to detect inundation frequency. Sentinel-1 is a radar satellite which allows to 'see through clouds'. Definitely lots to explore with these amounts of data! The overview map below highlights the Irrawaddy river pattern and other permanent water bodies. The darkest colors are areas that are permanently inundated, like rivers and lakes. Rice paddies are intentionally inundated at the start of the growth season and can be distinguished by their characteristic patterns.

Up North, the Irrawaddy river morphology pattern clearly stands out. The areas next to the river are occasionally inundated during the year (image below).

 In the Irrawaddy delta (image below) a lot more details appear and inundated fields can clearly be distinguished.

Satelligence collaborates with local partners to include local information like cropping calendars into a mapping service. How could satellite information support your business? We would love to hear your ideas on how we can help decision-makers with our satellite data! 

About Satelligence

Satelligence cares about data, because we care about the planet. Forests disappear, population growth increases demand on food production and climate change challenges everything.

The Satelligence team has extensive experience in remote sensing, natural resource management, GIS, computer vision and machine learning. Moreover, with staff working around the globe, we know what's going on in the field. Satelligence specializes in providing highly detailed, semi-automated satellite-based insights and actionable results over large areas. Satelligence has world class expertise on scalable processing of radar and optical satellite images to assess patterns and trends in forests, agriculture and water. We deliver smart forest & commodity analytics to verify, predict and decide.

Want to know more?

If you are interested in our services contact us (Jet Greevink, country manager Myanmar, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)


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