Figure 1: Graphical abstract of our proposed unsupervised approach flood detection [1].
Figure 2: Graphical abstract of our proposed unsupervised Deep Learning approach [2] for flood detection.
Figure 3:Graphical abstract of our proposed unsupervised Deep Learning approach [3].
Presentation of paper [2] G. Simantiris and C. Panagiotakis, Unsupervised Deep Learning for Flood Segmentation in UAV imagery, 13th IAPR Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing (PRRS), presented by G. Simantiris.
In [1] we propose a novel unsupervised semantic segmentation method for fast and accurate flood area detection utilizing color images acquired from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). To our knowledge so far, this is the first fully unsupervised method for flood area segmentation in color images captured by UAVs, without the need of pre-desaster images.
In [2], we present a novel unsupervised Deep Learning method for flood segmentation in Unmanned Aerial Vehicle imagery. This method utilizes automatically generated labels as masks for the training process, eliminating the need for actual ground truth data.
In [3], we present a novel methodology for generating and filtering synthetic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) flood imagery to enhance the generalization capabilities of segmentation models.
In [4], we present AIFloodSense [1] (a Global Aerial Imagery Dataset for Semantic Segmentation and Understanding of Flooded Environments) that provides worldwide coverage and more recent aerial imagery than prior benchmarks. AIFloodSense is an aerial imagery dataset comprising 470 high-resolution images from 230 distinct flood events across 64 countries and six continents.
Datasets - Code - Experiments for Flood Detection
Flood detection code [1]: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/167961-flood-segmentation
Flood Area Segmentation Dataset (290 images) [1-2]: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/faizalkarim/flood-area-segmentation
Flood Semantic Segmentation Dataset (663 images) [1-2]: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/lihuayang111265/flood-semantic-segmentation-dataset
Real, Synthetic (SD_s) and semi-synthetic (SD_ip) Datasets [3]:
AIFloodSense Dataset [4]: https://sites.google.com/site/costaspanagiotakis/research/aifloodsense
Figure 4: Schematic overview of the proposed automated floodwater depth estimation framework. The pipeline is divided into two primary phases: (1) unsupervised segmentation of high resolution aerial imagery to delineate the two-dimensional flood extent, and (2) integration of the extracted footprints with a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) to calculate the volumetric depth based on hydrostatic equilibrium.
In [5], we introduce a fully unsupervised framework that accurately estimates standing urban floodwater depth by coupling post-event aerial imagery with DTMs, completely eliminating the need for labeled training data. Extensive validation across twelve heterogeneous catchments demonstrated robust regional spatial generalization.
Datasets - Code - Experiments for Floodwater Depth Estimation
Unsupervised Floodwater Depth Estimation code [5]: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/184383-unsupervised-floodwater-depth-estimation
Inundation2Depth Dataset (12 regions) [5-6]: https://zenodo.org/records/17308287
Related Publications (Flood Detection and Floodwater Depth Estimation)
[1] G. Simantiris and C. Panagiotakis, Unsupervised Color Based Flood Segmentation in UAV imagery, Remote Sensing, 16 (12), 2126, 2024.
[2] G. Simantiris and C. Panagiotakis, Unsupervised Deep Learning for Flood Segmentation in UAV imagery, 13th IAPR Workshop on Pattern Recognition in Remote Sensing, 2024.
[3] G. Simantiris, K. Bacharidis and C. Panagiotakis, Closing the Domain Gap: Can Pseudo-Labels from Synthetic UAV Data Enable Real-World Flood Segmentation?, 25(12), Sensors, 2025.
[4] Georgios Simantiris, Konstantinos Bacharidisa, Apostolos Papanikolaou, Petros Giannakakis, Costas Panagiotakis, AIFloodSense: A Global Aerial Imagery Dataset for Semantic Segmentation and Understanding of Flooded Environments, arXiv preprint arXiv: arXiv:2512.17432
https://sites.google.com/site/costaspanagiotakis/research/aifloodsense
[5] G. Simantiris, K. Bacharidis, and C. Panagiotakis, Unsupervised Estimation of Post-Event Standing Urban Floodwater Depth Using Aerial Imagery and Digital Terrain Models, Remote Sensing, 18(16), 2673, 2026.
[6] Blay, J.; Gebregziabher, Y.; Jha, M.K.; Beni, L.H. Inundation2Depth: A multi-source dataset for floodwater depth estimation in urban areas. Data Brief 2025, 64, 112347.