Flood delineation and water depth, Iran (2020-02-10)

Activation date: 2020-02-10 Event type: Flood Activation reason: Heavy rains from the 9th to the 11th of January 2020 led to flash floods in south-east Iran (figure 1), where heavy damages on infrastructures, buildings and croplands have been reported. The CEMS Risk and Recovery Mapping service has been activated on the 31st of January. The aim of this activation is to detect flooded areas around two cities, i.e. Minab and Seerik, in order to help assessing the impact of the disaster and managing the aftermath in terms of planning and budget, as well as to use the products as input during the recovery and rebuilding phase. The resulting products show flood extents and estimated water depths.This activation is complementary to CEMS RRM FLEX activation EMSN066 (https://emergency.copernicus.eu/EMSN066)Figure 1: overflowing river in Seerik (source: photo provided by the End User)Proposed solutions and resultsMap the reference hydrology using Sentinel-2 data acquired the 30th of December.Map the post-event hydrology using a fusion of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.Erase reference hydrology from crisis hydrology to keep only the flooded areas. Manual refinement of the result.Statistical validation.Water depth computation and validation. Flooded areas surfacesMinab: 11,889.0 haSeerik: 1,934.4 haFigure 2: observed flooded area extent near Seerik (click to zoom).Figure 3: overview map over Minab (click to zoom).