flooding

First satellite imagery of flooding in southern India

December 10, 2015

South eastern India has recently experienced major flooding. The floods have been caused by a combination of unusually high rainfall and a number of human factors, including unplanned urban development on former wetlands and other natural sinks and possibly poor reservoir management.

As they usually do for major disasters, Google has set up this Google Crisis Response page and also released some imagery from DigitalGlobe, which you can view on this map.

The imagery is black & white and rather cloudy, but the extent of the flooding can clearly be seen.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to view the images in Google Earth, so we hope they release a KML file as they have on previous occasions.

For more on the flooding and some photos see this article

Google has recently done an imagery update in Google Earth, but there is no recent imagery for the area affected by the floods. The update includes imagery up to November 30th, 2015.

2015 Brazil floods in Google Earth

August 7, 2015

Earlier this week we looked a flood damage in Georgia and Texas. Thank you to GEB reader for pointing us to imagery of flooding in Magdeburg, Germany in 2013. Find it in Google Earth with this KML file .

We have been aware for some time that there was major flooding in Brazil earlier this year, but have not until recently been able to find relevant imagery. We felt the need to include the year in our post title as a quick internet search revealed the fact that Brazil appears to have had severe floods nearly every year in recent history.

A small settlement near the town of Benjamin Constant, Brazil. Although it is certainly flooded, closer inspection reveals that there are raised walkways between the houses and high water levels are probably common. It is hard to tell from the satellite imagery whether the flooding was severe enough to have caused damage.

Coari, Brazil. Yet again, clearly flooded, but walkways exist in the flooded streets that can be seen in older imagery, suggesting flooding is common and prepared for.

Despite the flooding affecting a very large area (over 2000 km of river) we were only able to find a few relevant recent satellite images. However, we did discover the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” and they have a number of recent satellite images of the area and before and after comparisons of the imagery – usually using Google Earth imagery for the “before” image.

To put them in context we have created a set of Placemarks for Google Earth with links to the relevant “before and after” comparisons. Download this KML file to view them in Google Earth.

Flood damage in Google Earth

August 4, 2015

We have looked at flooding a number of times in the past, including satellite and aerial imagery of flooding and its aftermath, crisis response maps, simulated sea level rise and most recently a data error resulting in a city appearing to be flooded.

Google has not released any ‘imagery updates’ maps since the release of the ‘Voyager’ layers at the end of June, so it is not easy to find new imagery. However, we have come across two sets of imagery related to flooding that we thought worth sharing.

The first one is an image of a zoo in Tbilisi, Georgia. When we first saw the story in the news of a number of zoo animals escaping during a flood, we found the location in Google Earth and saved a Placemark. Since then, we have been checking back regularly to see if it gets updated – and it has.

Tbilisi Zoo, Georgia, captured on June 18th, 2015, about 4 days after the flooding.

There are also several YouTube videos of wild animals roaming the city, including a tiger, a bear, a hippo and either a crocodile or alligator. Sadly, many animals were killed by the flood and some of the survivors had to be shot.

The second set of imagery is of Austin and Houston, Texas, captured between May 27th and June 1st, 2015. Austin, Houston and surrounding areas experienced heavy flooding a few days before the imagery was captured. However, the earlier imagery is too cloudy to see much and the flooding appears to have mostly dispersed by the later imagery. However, there is evidence of flood damage especially along the Blanco River southwest of Austin.

Fischer Store Road Bridge as pictured in this article

There is another bridge washed away further downstream and a number of houses have been damaged or washed away.

On Lake Travis, north of Austin, there are floating houses that are obviously designed to be able to move to some extent depending on water levels. However, some houses have been washed downstream due to the flooding.

Those purple roofed houses in midstream come from a location further upstream. See the KML file at the end of this post for the exact location.

We were unable to find any obvious signs of flood damage in Houston, Texas. If you find any please let us know in the comments.

Here is some drone footage of the Austin flood on YouTube.

For locations mentioned in this post download this KML file.

Using Google Earth to predict sea level rise

March 18, 2014

A new study released recently by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Innsbruck includes some impactful visualizations of what sea level rise could mean to various historic sites over the next 2000 years. Using Andrew David Thaler’s Drown Your Town technique, they created images such as this:

The reason for going 2000 years into the future was because “projections for global sea level rise during the next century vary widely, to smooth out any uncertainties in long-term forecasts.” To compound the problem, the Google Earth overlay for this can be inaccurate as Andrew mentioned on his site:

These are not perfect models of sea level rise, they are just useful (and entertaining) visualization tools. The topology in Google Earth is not perfect (you will find places where the sea itself is higher than you sea level rise layer).

All of that said, it’s still an interesting look at our possible future, and some of the images are very thought-provoking. You can check out the full article here or read the full study here.

Falcon UAV drones assisting with flooding in Colorado – until FEMA stops them

September 17, 2013

A few days ago we shared the Boulder, Colorado crisis response map with you, as the area is continuing to be inundated with rain and flooding. As they continue to fight the water, another interesting battle is emerging: Falcon UAV against the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Falcon has a hand-launched drone aircraft that can fly for roughly an hour and automatically generate very accurate maps of the ground. Here is a quick video showing how the drone is launched:

As for the results, you can see a snippet of their work in Colorado below or download the KMZ file here (warning: 500MB) to see it in Google Earth. It’s quite remarkable, especially considering the speed with which the imagery can be captured, georeferenced and shared.

Unfortunately, FEMA has told them they’re no longer allowed to fly the drone. In fact, they were told that their “request to fly drones was not only denied but more specifically we were told by FEMA that anyone flying drones would be arrested.”

As IEEE Spectrum is quick to point out, we’re only hearing one side of the story. FEMA may have a very legitimate reason for grounding the drone. However, considering all circumstances it seems that it would be quite valuable to have that aircraft capturing fresh imagery for the area.

I’m hoping that FEMA releases a statement of some sort about this issue, as it’s reflecting quite poorly on them so far. Check out the full article for yourself over on IEEE Spectrum.