{"id":154166,"date":"2019-09-16T08:25:39","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T12:25:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=154166"},"modified":"2019-09-24T11:22:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T15:22:27","slug":"researchers-hone-ability-map-storm-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2019\/09\/researchers-hone-ability-map-storm-flooding\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Hone Our Ability to Map Storm Flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"

In major storms such as Hurricane Dorian, which initially posed grave threats to the southeastern United States before devastating the Bahamas, massive flooding can occur within a matter of hours.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But it can take days or even weeks for a flood to recede. And a full assessment of where the damage is worst can take even longer, if surveyors can\u2019t access the flooded areas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Researchers at the University of Connecticut are developing a radar satellite-based mapping technique that they say dramatically reduces the time it takes to delineate the flooded areas\u00a0 \u2014 not only enabling first responders to be much quicker and more effective, but improving the ability of forecasters to more accurately predict the inundated area caused by future storms.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

There\u2019s no access to those locations to be able to go and survey them, so a space-based system is the only source that emergency managers have. — Emmanouil Anagnostou<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen a satellite passes over, we\u2019re able to very quickly quantify the impact and say what is the extent of the damage,\u201d says <\/span>Emmanouil Anagnostou<\/span><\/a>, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Eversource Energy Center<\/a>, which is spearheading the project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis satellite-based method gives a very good first assessment of where the water is inundating. That\u2019s a very important map, because emergency response people can take the map, overlay it on their infrastructure map, and then they can start making quick assessments of the damage.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to <\/span>news<\/span><\/a> reports<\/span><\/a>, Hurricane Dorian killed at least 50 and left an estimated 70,000 people homeless in the Bahamas, and cut power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Canada. Dorian reached Juno Beach, Florida, on Sept. 2, and moved up the coast from there, causing damage in the Carolinas, as well. Multiple people died in Florida and in North Carolina while working on properties in preparation for the storm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such threats make quick assessment all the more important.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"UConn\u2019s flood mapping system is automated and \u201crequires zero human interpretation, from the detection of potentially flooded area to the final generation of the flood maps,\u201d says <\/span>Xinyi Shen<\/span><\/a>, assistant research professor of civil and environmental engineering. <\/span>\u201cFor the decision-makers and the first responders, it\u2019s very important to know where the flooding is severe so that they can allocate resources.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Visiting doctoral student Qing Yang from Guang Xi University is collaborating with the UConn team on the processing chain of the flood mapping system.<\/p>\n

Currently, it takes approximately two days to obtain the data from European Space Agency\u2019s satellite after a storm and then another 12 hours to generate maps. As UConn began generating flood maps in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence in 2018, NASA also adopted the maps<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

While that might not sound fast, it\u2019s a big improvement over what is currently available.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEven with a two-day delay, there\u2019s no team globally that produces [inundation maps] in such a short time-frame,\u201d Shen says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anagnostou says, \u201cvery few people know the extent of any damage from utilities to flooding. The true assessment of the damage comes weeks or even months after the event,\u201d usually with surveys and drones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI know that everybody is always focusing on forecasting, and there is a lot of effort going into the forecasting, but very few people can give in almost real time a true estimate of what actually happened after the storm passes,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no access to those locations to be able to go and survey them, so a space-based system is the only source that emergency managers have to understand the extent of the inundation, which results in the extent of possible damages.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The research team first reported on the use of satellites to produce inundation maps in near-real time in the February 2019 <\/span>edition<\/span><\/a> of the <\/span>Remote Sensing of Environment<\/span><\/i> journal.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UConn researchers developed a radar satellite-based mapping technique that will improve the ability of forecasters to more accurately predict the inundated area caused by future storms.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":154188,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2192,2196,2199,2076,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-154166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-fairfield-county","category-middlesex-county","category-new-london-county","category-research","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 17:57:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154166"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154232,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154166\/revisions\/154232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/154188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154166"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=154166"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=154166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}