Remote Sensing Applications to Hydrometeorological Risks in a Changing Climate

A special issue of Water (ISSN 2073-4441). This special issue belongs to the section "Hydrology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2024 | Viewed by 12328

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa, 16145 Genoa, Italy
Interests: flash floods; flood forecast modelling; flood risk management; remote sensing applications in water-related risks; natural hazards exposure and vulnerability
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa, 16145 Genoa, Italy
Interests: disaster risk reduction; natural hazards exposure and vulnerability; flood risk assessment; climate change mitigation and adaptation; multi-hazards risk assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The special issue is dedicated to original research on remote sensing applications for hydro-meteorological risk assessment and management. Published papers will contribute to understanding how remote sensing can advance the state of the art on:

  • the monitoring, forecasting and modelling of hydrometeorological hazards, including, but not limited to, heavy rainfall, floods and droughts;
  • the assessment and management of the impacts of extreme hydrometeorological events on urban, rural and ecological systems, including the monitoring of the recovery processes
  • the assessment of physical, social, and economic exposure and vulnerability to hydrometeorological hazards and the monitoring of their changes.

We encourage contributions that explore how remote sensing can improve the understanding of the effects of climate change on hydro-meteorological risks and their impacts.

Multi-sensor and hyperspectral imagery applications are particularly welcome. Papers with a special focus on developing countries or data-poor contexts are encouraged.

Dr. Giorgio Boni
Dr. Silvia De Angeli
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • hydrometeorological risk
  • remote sensing
  • monitoring and forecasting
  • floods
  • droughts
  • exposure and vulnerability
  • multi-sensor
  • hyperspectral imagery
  • climate change

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 8903 KiB  
Article
Improving Sentinel-1 Flood Maps Using a Topographic Index as Prior in Bayesian Inference
by Mark Edwin Tupas, Florian Roth, Bernhard Bauer-Marschallinger and Wolfgang Wagner
Water 2023, 15(23), 4034; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15234034 - 21 Nov 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1645
Abstract
Sentinel-1-based flood mapping works well but with well-known issues over rugged terrain. Applying exclusion masks to improve the results is common practice in unsupervised and global applications. One such mask is the height above the nearest drainage (HAND), which uses terrain information to [...] Read more.
Sentinel-1-based flood mapping works well but with well-known issues over rugged terrain. Applying exclusion masks to improve the results is common practice in unsupervised and global applications. One such mask is the height above the nearest drainage (HAND), which uses terrain information to reduce flood lookalikes in SAR images. The TU Wien flood mapping algorithm is one operational workflow using this mask. Being a Bayesian method, this algorithm can integrate auxiliary information as prior probabilities to improve classifications. This study improves the TU Wien flood mapping algorithm by introducing a HAND prior function instead of using it as a mask. We estimate the optimal function parameters and observe the performance in flooded and non-flooded scenarios in six study sites. We compare the flood maps generated with HAND and (baseline) non-informed priors with reference CEMS rapid mapping flood extents. Our results show enhanced performance by decreasing false negatives at the cost of slightly increasing false positives. In utilizing a single parametrization, the improved algorithm shows potential for global implementation. Full article
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20 pages, 6801 KiB  
Article
Spatiotemporal Variation Characteristics of Droughts and Their Connection to Climate Variability and Human Activity in the Pearl River Basin, South China
by Lilu Cui, Xiusheng Chen, Jiachun An, Chaolong Yao, Yong Su, Chengkang Zhu and Yu Li
Water 2023, 15(9), 1720; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15091720 - 28 Apr 2023
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1705
Abstract
Droughts have damaging impacts on human society and ecological environments. Therefore, studying the impacts of climate variability and human activity on droughts has very important scientific value and social significance in order to understand drought warnings and weaken the adverse impacts of droughts. [...] Read more.
Droughts have damaging impacts on human society and ecological environments. Therefore, studying the impacts of climate variability and human activity on droughts has very important scientific value and social significance in order to understand drought warnings and weaken the adverse impacts of droughts. In this study, we used a combined drought index based on five Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and GRACE Follow-On solutions to characterize droughts in the Pearl River basin (PRB) and its sub-basins during 2003 and 2020. Then, we accurately quantified the impact of climate variability and human activity on droughts in the PRB and seven sub-basins by combining the hydrometeorological climate index and in situ human activity data. The results show that 14 droughts were identified in the PRB, particularly the North River basin with the most drought months (52.78%). The El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Indian Ocean Dipole were found to have important impacts on droughts in the PRB. They affect the operation of the atmospheric circulation, as well as the East Asia summer monsoon, resulting in a decrease in precipitation in the PRB. This impact shows a significant east–west difference on the spatial scale. The middle and upper reaches of the PRB were found to be dominated by SM, while the lower reaches were found to be dominated by GW. Human activity was found to mainly exacerbate droughts in the PRB, but also plays a significant role in reducing peak magnitude. The sub-basins with a higher proportion of total water consumption experienced more droughts (more than 11), and vice versa. The Pearl River Delta showed the highest drought intensification. Reservoir storage significantly reduces the drought peak and severity, but the impact effect depends on its application and balance with the total water consumption. Our study provides a reference for analyzing the drought characteristics, causes, and impacts of sub-basins on a global scale. Full article
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16 pages, 9525 KiB  
Article
Flooding in the Digital Twin Earth: The Case Study of the Enza River Levee Breach in December 2017
by Angelica Tarpanelli, Bianca Bonaccorsi, Marco Sinagra, Alessio Domeneghetti, Luca Brocca and Silvia Barbetta
Water 2023, 15(9), 1644; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15091644 - 23 Apr 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3689
Abstract
The accurate delineation of flood hazard maps is a key element of flood risk management policy. Flood inundation models are fundamental for reproducing the boundaries of flood-prone areas, but their calibration is limited to the information available on the areas affected by inundation [...] Read more.
The accurate delineation of flood hazard maps is a key element of flood risk management policy. Flood inundation models are fundamental for reproducing the boundaries of flood-prone areas, but their calibration is limited to the information available on the areas affected by inundation during observed flood events (typically fragmentary photo, video or partial surveys). In recent years, Earth Observation data have supported flood monitoring and emergency response (e.g., the Copernicus Emergency Service) thanks to the proliferation of available satellite sensors, also at high spatial resolution. Under this umbrella, the study investigates a levee breach that occurred in December 2017 along the Enza River, a right tributary of the Po River, that caused the inundation of a large area including Lentigione village. The flood event is simulated with a 2D hydraulic model using satellite images to calibrate the roughness coefficients. The results show that the processing and the timing of the high-resolution satellite imagery is fundamental for a reliable representation of the flooded area. Full article
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17 pages, 4447 KiB  
Article
Analysis and Processing of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation Images of the 2022 Marche (Central Italy) Flood
by Luca Pulvirenti, Giuseppe Squicciarino, Elisabetta Fiori, Laura Candela and Silvia Puca
Water 2023, 15(7), 1353; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15071353 - 1 Apr 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2006
Abstract
The use of SAR data for flood mapping is well established. However, the problem of the missed detection of rapidly evolving floods remains. Recently, the Italian Space Agency deployed the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) constellation, with an on-demand capability that makes it possible [...] Read more.
The use of SAR data for flood mapping is well established. However, the problem of the missed detection of rapidly evolving floods remains. Recently, the Italian Space Agency deployed the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG) constellation, with an on-demand capability that makes it possible to reduce the number of missed floods. However, for on-demand SAR acquisitions, pre-flood images are generally not available, and change-detection methods, commonly adopted for flood mapping using SAR, cannot be applied. This study focused on the high-resolution CSG images of a flood that occurred in central Italy. An accurate analysis of the radar responses of the different targets included in the scenes observed by GSG was performed. Then, a methodology to detect floods using high-resolution single SAR images was developed. The methodology was based on image segmentation and fuzzy logic. Image segmentation allowed us to analyze homogeneous areas in the CSG images. Fuzzy logic was used to integrate the SAR data with ancillary information that was useful when change-detection methods could not be applied. A comparison with the maps produced by the Copernicus Emergency Service, using high-resolution optical images, demonstrated the reliability of the methodology. Full article
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17 pages, 2643 KiB  
Article
Multi-Sensor Data Analysis of an Intense Weather Event: The July 2021 Lake Como Case Study
by Alessandra Mascitelli, Marco Petracca, Silvia Puca, Eugenio Realini, Andrea Gatti, Riccardo Biondi, Aikaterini Anesiadou, Luca Brocca, Gianfranco Vulpiani, Rosa Claudia Torcasio, Stefano Federico, Antonio Oriente and Stefano Dietrich
Water 2022, 14(23), 3916; https://doi.org/10.3390/w14233916 - 1 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2480
Abstract
A comprehensive analysis of the July 2021 event that occurred on Lake Como (Italy), during which heavy hailstorms and floods affected the surroundings of Lake, is presented. The study provides a detailed analysis of the event using different observation sources currently available. The [...] Read more.
A comprehensive analysis of the July 2021 event that occurred on Lake Como (Italy), during which heavy hailstorms and floods affected the surroundings of Lake, is presented. The study provides a detailed analysis of the event using different observation sources currently available. The employed techniques include both conventional (rain gauges, radar, atmospheric sounding) and non-conventional (satellite-based Earth observation products, GNSS, and lightning detection network) observations for hydro-meteorological analysis. The study is split in three main topics: event description by satellite-based observations; long-term analysis by the ERA5 model and ASCAT soil water index; and short-term analysis by lightning data, GNSS delays and radar-VIL. The added value of the work is the near-real-time analysis of some of the datasets used, which opens up the potential for use in alerting systems, showing considerable application possibilities in NWP modeling, where it can also be useful for the implementation of early warning systems. The results highlight the validity of the different techniques and the consistency among the observations. This result, therefore, leads to the conclusion that a joint use of the innovative techniques with the operational ones can bring reliability in the description of events. Full article
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