Spatially distributed water stages from remotely sensed imagery

The potential of remote sensing for disaster§monitoring is well known and numerous efforts are§currently made towards more timely image acquisition.§Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites seem§particularly useful for flood monitoring. To date,§SAR flood imagery is mostly used to map flood area§and extent. On only rare occasions, other§flood-related variables are derived to aid flood§management. Therefore, it is the aim of this work to§derive water stages from a single date flood image§that are accurate enough for adequate integration§with flood inundation models. During a first stage, a§SAR image of a flood has been used to develop a§remote sensing-based flood model that accounts for§most data uncertainties, adapts to localised flow§behaviour and estimates spatially distributed water§stages accurately enough for integration with§hydrodynamic models. During a second stage,§uncertainties associated with the SAR derived water§stages are estimated, which is much in line with the§current philosophy in hydrological modelling.§Perspectives on how to use these data to support or§even improve flood inundation modelling is§highlighted in the last chapter.