Alongside research partners, CEOS is implementing disaster modelling and monitoring capabilities and working more closely with end users in order to build and sustain capacity for optimal flood and water management using satellite imagery. The end users include national, regional, and international agencies responsible for preparedness, disaster management, water resources management and flood/ drought prediction and assessment. These projects are contributing to risk reduction in Southern Africa from disaster events in terms of people’s lives and livelihoods, as well as reducing the cost for assessments and recovery. Improvements are being made around individual decision making and directly related to the introduction of satellite-based products and services, especially in the area of flooding. Advancements are also being made by local, national, regional, and international agencies in generating their own products and validating the satellite data using crowd-sourcing techniques and open source tools.

The experiences of the Italian authorities demonstrates the importance of organisation, cooperation between stakeholders, and the integration of satellite data with models, informed by interaction with regional and local authorities, to produce accurate and timely flood map products in support of disaster preparedness and response.


Namibia

In Southern Africa the Namibian Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and the National Water Resources Authorities are using satellite-derived products and services to warn the public of impending floods; monitor algal blooms in reservoirs; and track flood, drought, and health- related events as they unfold at the national level. The Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) provides disaster risk management support on a regional basis to their constituent countries using the same remote-sensing capabilities.

These flood and drought monitoring and modelling capabilities have been used by the Namibian government since 2008, when the worst flooding in two decades occurred in the northern part of the country. At that time, the affected population chose to not take action ahead of the flood because no serious flooding had occurred for a long time and flood forecasts from satellite remote sensing were not widely available. People within the areas of concern did not heed warnings by national agencies and this resulted in approximately 250,000 people directly affected, as well as significant property damage. A state of emergency was declared and many people were rescued from rooftops using boats and helicopters. During the following year, extensive use of satellite data allowed national agencies to improve their analyses and share them with news outlets. The satellite imagery analysis showed not only where to expect flooding, but also indicated potential severity, so that people within the risk areas could gauge the level of danger. This enabled effective, informed, pre-emptive action during the flood season.

In the following years, CEOS Agencies and their partners in academia and at research institutions joined forces to develop a pilot program aimed at improving these modelling and monitoring services by incorporating new satellite assets for higher spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution. These programs also include advanced capabilities for crowd-sourcing to improve validation. These advancements make use of the Internet and are based on open source tools and services that are freely available to the public.

The tools and services are platform-independent and are in widespread use via personal computers and smartphones. Processing services and predictive models that were unavailable in the region 5 years ago have been converted to open-source code that is now freely available. Training on installation and operation of these open-source services have been conducted in-country on numerous occasions and those training courses are available as webinars, videos, and presentations that are all posted on the Internet for public access. In April 2014, CEOS Agencies kicked off a 3-year pilot to extend this approach to Southern Africa and establish a vision for sustainable satellite-based flood services in the region.



Namibian hydrologists manually measure flood water depth for map validation.


Mozambique

The Zambezi River is the fourth largest river in Africa, sustaining biodiversity and agriculture and generating hydroelectric power. However, nearly every year, moderate- to high-magnitude floods place hundreds of thousands of people and their livelihoods at risk. The countries in the Zambezi basin, in particular the downstream country of Mozambique with its vast delta area, have limited infrastructure and resources and thus lack the capacity to establish effective flood management, mitigation, and relief services plans or a flood forecasting system. Although some local flood forecasting efforts in the Zambezi basin exist, there is currently no integrated flood warning system, primarily due to poor communication facilities and limited exchange of information and data in real-time. Furthermore, flow and water-level measurement stations are sparse in most countries in the region.

The lack of information makes emergency response such as food aid distributions by the United Nations World Food Programme (UN WFP) very challenging. Reliable maps showing infrastructure and the current state of rivers and floodplain inundation (as illustrated in Figure 1) need to be delivered in near-real time to UN WFP field officers at ground level. With composite images and flood products from the array of satellites and services outlined below, there is a dramatic increase in mapping accuracy, as well as detailed information on the rise or fall of floods on a regular basis during the emergency response. Observations of floodplain inundation over time allow disaster relief agencies like the UN WFP to identify the most significant flood events and allocate resources and direct operations accordingly.