Application Of Satellite Communication To Help With Flood Detection In Africa

The African Union is an organization that consists of all 55 countries in Africa, the organization is aimed at helping build a peaceful, prosperous and integrated Africa and to that end, they have made an agenda toward achieving some set goals in 2063. Their aspirations are as follows:

1. A prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth and sustainable development.
2. An integrated continent, politically united and based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance.
3. An Africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law.
4. A peaceful and secure Africa.
5. An Africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics.
6. An Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children.
7. Africa as a strong, united and influential global player and partner.

Although water itself can be very good and is very essential to life, its excess i. e. flooding, can be very dangerous and can lead to loss of life and property in excess.

Throughout the world some methods have already been put in place to detect floods so that adequate preparation can be made towards it to reduce loss of life and property. An example of such a process is called water surface change detection. The Global Flood Detection System (GFDS) aims to provide a systematic detection of riverine flooding around the world. This technique was first developed at the Dartmouth Flood Observatory (DFO) although, it is a modification. The methodology involves monitoring river sites and detects flooding by using the microwave radiation difference of land and water.

Another example is automatic near real-time flood detection. This has been developed using Suomi-NPP/VIIRS (Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership/Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) imagery to automatically generate near real-time flood maps for National Weather Service (NWS) River Forecast Centers (RFC) in the USA. The software, which is called VIIRS NOAA GMU Flood Version 1. 0 (hereafter referred to as VNG Flood V1. 0), consists of a series of algorithms that include water detection, cloud shadow removal, terrain shadow removal, minor flood detection, water fraction retrieval, and floodwater determination.

Floods are the most common phenomenon that causes human suffering, inconvenience and widespread damage to buildings, structures, crops and infrastructures. Floods have been observed to disrupt personal, economic & social activities and set back a nations security & development by destroying roads, buildings and other assets. Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for the practical purposes. Applications of this knowledge can help Africa to detect floods which will provide Africans with information which will help in adequate preparation thereby helping reduce losses in lives and properties.

One of the major causes of flooding, this means that to be able to forecast floods, we need to be able to forecast rain i. e. meteorogical forecasts. This has improved continuously over the years thanks to satellite and remote sensing technologies collecting observational data of very high spatial and temporal solutions, over land surfaces and oceans, which then can be assimilated into modern weather forecasting models. This technology can help by increasing warning time, providing complementary comparison data, providing information on river basin level and filling the gaps i. e. helping countries which do not have national flood early warning systems in place. Technology is already being used overseas to help in flood detection, for example, European Flood Awareness Systems (EFAS) has been designed to close the gap of only partially existing probabilistic forecasting by providing Europe-wide forecasting information with lead times up to 10 days, it operated for the first time in 2010 where it provided the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) in Europe with an early warning for Poland and they were able to adequately prepare for the event. This kind of system can also be employed in Africa.

Now that we have discussed the African Union agenda and how we plan to help with a section of it by showing how to detect floods thereby reducing loss of lives and property. We have also introduced briefly some methods that have already been put in place for this specific purpose and also how technology can be used to help this cause. Now, for the main cause of this paper, we want to briefly talk about how communication satellites can help flood detection. One of the methods in which satellites can be used is by a taking advantage of the high temporal resolution of the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) aboard the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) series of satellites to derive several parameters that describe the sensitivity of land surface reflectivity to variation in solar position throughout the day.

Another method is the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) based global flood detection system in Bangladesh. This method is an operation launched by NASA that consists of a microwave imager and the first space-borne precipitation radar to estimate rainfall. The satellite is a focal point for a constellation of satellites used to derive satellite rainfall products that are known as the TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA). Flood monitoring can be achieved through rain-based systems, where the rain being monitored by space borne sensors are fed into a global hydrologic model for deriving the flood potential. Another way of flood monitoring can be based on the direct detection surface water inundation from remote sensing platforms, such as the Dartmouth Flood Observatory and the JRC Global Flood Detection System.