IGCP 734 Annual Workshop 2021

In the era of the rapidly changing climate, flood events are becoming more intense and more frequent posing losses of invaluable lives and properties worldwide, especially in the developing countries. Our project REFRA-SOS (Realtime Flood Risk Assessment in developing countries using Social media, Optical and SAR satellite data), sponsored by UNESCO International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP) and Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), aims to address these challenges by developing sustainable and effective management plans driven by Earth Observations, social media crowdsourcing, and hydrological models. The first workshop in the series will focus our attention on the current methods used in flood risk assessment in developing countries and the needs for an improvement, using Cameroon as a case study. The potential and future outlooks for using synthetic aperture radar (SAR), social media, and artificial intelligence (AI) in flood risk assessment will also be discussed.