Flood detection and mapping of the Thailand Central plain using RADARSAT and MODIS under a sensor web environment

Flooding in general is insignificant event worldwide and also in Thailand. The Central plain, the Northern plain and the northeast of Thailand are frequently flooded areas, caused by yearly monsoons. The Thai government has extra expenditure to provide disaster relief and for the restoration of flood affected structures, persons, livestock, etc. Current flood detection in real time or near real time has become a challenge in the flood emergency response. In this paper, an automatic instant time flood detection approach consisting of a data retrieval service, flood sensor observation service (SOS), flood detection web processing service (WPS) under a sensor web environment, is presented to generate dynamically real-time flood maps. A scenario of a RADARSAT and MODIS sensor web data service for flood detection cover of the Thailand Central plain is used to test the feasibility of the proposed framework. MODIS data are used to overview the wide area, while RADARSAT data are used to classify the flood area. The proposed framework using the transactional web coverage service (WCS-T) for instant flood detection processes dynamic real-time remote sensing observations and generates instant flood maps. The results show that the proposed approach is feasible for automatic instant flood detection. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.