Water Level Estimation and Reduction of Hydraulic Model Calibration Uncertainties Using Satellite SAR Images of Floods

Exploitation of river inundation satellite images, particularly for operational applications, is mostly restricted to flood extent mapping. However, there lies significant potential for improvement in a 3-D characterization of floods (i.e., flood depth snaps) and an integration of the remote-sensing-derived (RSD) characteristics in hydraulic models. This paper aims at developing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image analysis methods that go beyond flood extent mapping to assess the potential of these images in the spatiotemporal characterization of flood events. To meet this aim, two research issues were addressed. The first issue relates to water level estimation. The proposed method, which is an adaptation to SAR images of the method developed by [1] and [2] for water level estimation using flood aerial photographs, is composed of three steps: 1) extraction of flood extent limits that are relevant for water level estimation; 2) water level estimation by merging relevant limits with a Digital Elevation Model; and 3) constraining of the water level estimates using hydraulic coherence concepts. Applied to an ENVISAT image of an Alzette River flood (2003, Grand Duchy of Luxembourg), this provides +/- 54-cm average vertical uncertainty water levels that were validated using a sample of ground surveyed high water marks. The second issue aims at better constraining hydraulic models using these RSD water levels. To meet this aim, a traditional calibration using recorded hydrographs is completed via comparison between simulated and RSD water levels. This integration of the RSD characteristics proves to better constrain the model (i.e., the number of parameter sets providing acceptable results with respect to observations has been reduced). Furthermore, simulations of a flood event of a different return period (2007) using the model calibrated for the 2003 flood event shows the reliability of the latter for flood forecasting.