Research Highlights
GEE4FLOOD: Rapid mapping of flood areas using temporal Sentinel-1 SAR images with Google Earth Engine cloud platform
Abstract
The present state of the art technologies for flood mapping are typically tested on small geographical regions due to limitation of resources, which hinders the implementation of real-time flood management activities. We proposed a unified framework (GEE4FLOOD) for rapid flood mapping in Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud platform. With the unexpected spells of extreme rainfall in August 2018, many parts of Kerala state in India experienced a major disastrous flood. Therefore, we tested the GEE4FLOOD processing chain on August 2018 Kerala flood event. GEE4FLOOD utilizes multitemporal Sentinel-1 synthetic aperture radar images available in GEE catalog and an automatic Otsu’s thresholding algorithm for flood mapping. It also utilizes other remote sensing datasets available in GEE catalog for permanent water body mask creation and result validation. The ground truth data collected during the Kerala flood indicates promising accuracy with 82% overall accuracy and 78.5% accuracy for flood class alone. In addition, the entire process from data fetching to flood map generation at a varying geographical extent (district to state level) took ∼2 to 4 min.
For more information, the paper can be accessed at this link GEE4FLOOD
Outputs
Geospatial multicriteria approach for solid waste disposal site selection in Dehradun city, India.
Abstract
Solid waste generation is increasing rapidly in urban areas of India as well as globally. As land resources for waste disposal are limited in highly populated countries like India, identification of solid waste disposal sites in urban centres is a challenging task, as this involves physical, socio-economic and environmental factors. Dehradun, the capital city of Uttarakhand at present has only one disposal site which is not having good spatial accessibility for all the locations in the city and also it is an environmentally vulnerable site. The present study aims to find suitable sites for decentralized solid waste disposal using geospatial techniques with multi spatio-temporal remote sensing data. The geospatial multicriteria analysis was performed with a weighted overlay technique by considering various criteria such as physical, social and demographic aspects of the city for locating the solid waste disposal site(s).
For more information, the paper can be accessed at this link SWM_DDN
Outputs
Satellite based drought assessment over Latur, India using soil moisture derived from SMOS
Abstract
Climatological variables such as rainfall, temperature have been extensively used by researchers for drought monitoring at a larger spatial region. These variables have a direct influence on the soil moisture which in turn extends the application of soil moisture in drought assessment. With the advancement of technology, various satellites provide soil moisture data at different spatio-temporal resolutions. In this article, soil moisture obtained from Soil Moisture Ocean Salinity (SMOS) is used to analyze the drought condition over Latur district in Maharashtra, India. The monthly soil moisture derived by averaging the daily data for the years 2010 to 2015 is compared with two drought indices, i.e. Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) calculated for years 2010 to 2015 and Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) calculated for years 2010 to 2013. Even though the overall correlation among the indices with the soil moisture is not significant, the seasonal (summer) correlation is significant. From the results, it is identified that SMOS derived soil moisture can be used as a potential parameter in drought assessment.
For more information, the paper can be accessed at this link Latur_Drought
Outputs
Urban Water Information System (UWIS): A web based spatial decision support system for management and monitoring water utility assets
Abstract
Asset management is always a crucial task in governance. Civic agencies provides different kind of services to the citizens like water supply, electricity, security, transport etc. These agencies maintain a number of assets to provide various services to the citizens. The assets in water utility network includes overhead tanks (OHT), clear water reservoirs, rising mains with different diameters, and water sources. GIS plays an important role in water utility services delivery like asset mapping, management, network analysis, and planning. Here, we developed user friendly Urban Water Information System (UWIS) using open source tools.
For more information, the paper can be accessed at this link “UWIS”.