A First Extension of the Robust Satellite Technique RST-FLOOD to Sentinel-2 Data for the Mapping of Flooded Areas: The Case of the Emilia Romagna (Italy) 2023 Event

Abstract

Extreme meteorological events hit our planet with increasing frequency, resulting in an ever-increasing number of natural disasters. Flash floods generated by intense and violent rains are among the most dangerous natural disasters that compromise crops and cause serious damage to infrastructure and human lives. In the case of such a kind of disastrous events, timely and accurate information about the location and extent of the affected areas can be crucial to better plan and implement recovery and containment interventions. Satellite systems may efficiently provide such information at different spatial/temporal resolutions. Several authors have developed satellite techniques to detect and map inundated areas using both Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a new generation of high-resolution optical data but with some accuracy limits, mostly due to the use of fixed thresholds to discriminate between the inundated and unaffected areas. In this paper, the RST-FLOOD fully automatic technique, which does not suffer from the aforementioned limitation, has been exported for the first time to the mid–high-spatial resolution (20 m) optical data provided by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 Multi-Spectral Instrument (MSI). The technique was originally designed for and successfully applied to Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), and Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) satellite data at a mid–low spatial resolution (from 1000 to 375 m). The processing chain was implemented in a completely automatic mode within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform to study the recent strong flood event that occurred in May 2023 in Emilia Romagna (Italy). The outgoing results were compared with those obtained through the implementation of an existing independent optical-based technique and the products provided by the official Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), which is responsible for releasing information during crisis events. The comparisons carried out show that RST-FLOOD is a simple implementation technique able to retrieve more sensitive and effective information than the other optical-based methodology analyzed here and with an accuracy better than the one offered by the CEMS products with a significantly reduced delivery time.