Review article: Detection of inundation areas due to the 2015 Kanto and Tohoku torrential rain in Japan based on multi-temporal ALOS-2 imagery

Torrential rain triggered by two typhoons hit the Kanto and Tohoku regions of Japan from 9 to 11 September 2015. Due to the record-breaking amount of rainfall, several riverbanks were overflowed and destroyed, causing floods over wide areas. The PALSAR-2 sensor on board the ALOS-2 satellite engaged in emergency observations of the affected areas during and after the heavy rain. Two pre-event and three co-event PALSAR-2 images were employed in this study to extract flooded areas in the city of Joso, Ibaraki Prefecture. The backscattering coefficient of the river water was investigated first using the PALSAR-2 intensity images and a land-cover map with a 10m resolution. The inundation areas were then extracted by setting threshold values for backscattering from water surfaces in the three temporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The extracted results were modified by considering the land cover and a digital elevation model (DEM). Next, the inundated built-up urban areas were extracted from the changes in SAR backscattering. The results were finally compared with those from visual inspections of airborne imagery by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI), and more than 85% of the maximum inundation areas were extracted successfully.