Journal Identication = JAG Article Identication = 404 Date: May 30, 2011 Time: 9:58pm

International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and
Geoinformation
j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ j ag
Rapid response ood detection using the MSG geostationary satellite
Simon Richard Proud

, Rasmus Fensholt, Laura Vang Rasmussen, Inge Sandholt

Department of Geography and Geology, University of Copenhagen, ster Voldgade 10, DK-1350, Copenhagen, Denmark
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 10 March 2010
Accepted 6 February 2011
Keywords:
Meteosat Second Generation
Flooding
BRDF
Anisotropy
SEVIRI
a b s t r a c t
A novel technique for the detection of ooded land using satellite data is presented. This new method
takes 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 reectivity to variation in solar position throughout the day.
Examination of these parameters can then yield information describing the nature of the surface being
viewed, including the presence of water due to ooding, on a 3-day basis. An analysis of data gathered
during the 2009 ooding events in West Africa shows that the presented method can detect oods of
comparable size to the SEVIRI pixel resolution on a short timescale, making it a valuable tool for large
scale ood mapping.
2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Floods are the most frequent of natural disasters, affecting more
than one billion people and killing in excess of 100,000 between
2002 and 2010 (EM-DAT, 2011a), with similar statistics being
reported for the previous decade (Jonkman, 2005; Alcntara-Ayala,
2002). Despite this, few techniques exist for the rapid detection
and monitoring of ooded land. Typically such techniques, where
they do exist, are based on local knowledge, news reports and gov-
ernmental information, such as the EM-DAT and Dartmouth Flood
Observatory databases, or require in situ monitoring of water con-
ditions using gauging stations placed at numerous intervals along a
rivers course. The latter method produces good quality results but
is expensive, which is a particular concern in the developing world,
wherethemajorityof peopleaffectedbysuchoodingevents live. It
is therefore important to develop global techniques for ood detec-
tion, particularly as it is predicted that climate change may lead to
more frequent and more severe ooding in the future (Kleinen and
Petschel-Held, 2007; McGranahan et al., 2007).
Limited ood mapping fromspace has been achieved by exam-
ining changes in the Normalised Difference Vegetation or Water
Indices (NDVI and NDWI respectively) due to the presence of
water on the land surface (Sanyal and Lu, 2004; Jain et al., 2005;
McFeeters, 1996). But NDVI is designed to monitor vegetation, and
so is unsuitable for ood mapping if very sparse or dense vege-
tation is present (Beget and Di Bella, 2007). Recently the Global
Disaster Alert and Coordination System(GDACS) has implemented
a method to allow ood monitoring on a daily or bi-daily basis

Corresponding author. Tel.: +45 35 32 25 84; fax: +45 35 32 25 01.

E-mail address: srp@geo.ku.dk (S.R. Proud).
from space using microwave sensors such as NASAs AMSR-E (De
Groeve et al., 2006; Brakenridge et al., 2007). This method pro-
vides a spatial resolution of 100km
2
, meaning that small oods
are not visible. Countering this, its use of microwave radiation
allows water to be visible despite cloud cover something that
is a severe problem when examining the surface within the Visi-
ble or Near InfraRed (VNIR) wavelengths. A recent study of ood
detection using data fromAMSR-E over Namibia produced positive
results, with the majority of ood events being correctly identied
and mapped (De Groeve, 2010). Additionally, satellite constella-
tions such as COSMO-SkyMed allowfor the analysis of ood events
at high spatial resolution (Boni et al., 2008; Pierdicca et al., 2010;
Hahmann et al., 2008). There has also been much work in integrat-
ing satellite measurements into hydrological models, including the
measurement of precipitation and soil moisture (Sandholt et al.,
2003a; Ottl and Vidal-Madjar, 1994; Chen et al., 2005), but these
typically focus on producing higher quality hydrological models
rather than on the detection and mapping of ooded land. It has
been shown (Sandholt et al., 2003b) that optical sensors such as
AVHRR can be useful in the detection of ooded land, although care
must be taken when employing such approaches to minimise the
effects of vegetation and other surface features. With the advent of
sensors such as the Spinning Enhanced Visible and InfraRed Imager
(SEVIRI) aboard Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) that produce
data every 15min (Aminou, 2002), it is nowpossible to gain cloud-
free VNIR observations of land surfaces much more rapidly than
before. It has been shown that the land surface can be viewed on
multiple occasions on a better than 3-day timescale with SEVIRI
(Fensholt et al., 2007). SEVIRI records the top of atmosphere (ToA)
reectance in three VNIRspectral bands that are named channels 1,
2 and 3. These are centred on wavelengths of 635, 810 and 1640nm
respectively, providing a pixel spacing as good as 3km/pixel.
0303-2434/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jag.2011.02.002
Journal Identication = JAG Article Identication = 404 Date: May 30, 2011 Time: 9:58pm
S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544 537
Due to the dynamic and transient nature of ooding events, it is
vital to examine them with an instrument capable of rapid data
acquisition. The MSG series of satellites fulls this requirement
well, due to its frequent imaging and xed position relative to the
Earths surface.
The Earths surface is not equally reective under all illumina-
tionconditions. Consequently, as the Sunmoves across the sky over
the course of a day, the reectance of the land surface will vary
in some cases by more than an order of magnitude (Coulson, 1966;
Kriebel, 1978). The type of land cover present on the surface and
the wavelength of light being used have a large effect upon the size
of this diurnal variation.
This study shows that analysing the variation in surface
reectance as a function of the suns position allows for exami-
nation of the properties of the land and, in particular, the ability to
map areas that are ooded at a given time. As an example of this
newtechnique a comparison is made to traditional ood detection
methods for the severe oods that occurred during mid-2009 in
West Africa. These oods resulted in widespread damage, particu-
larly in the city of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where the ooding
affected more than 150,000 people. The severity of these oods
makes themuseful for testing the SEVIRI ood detection method.
2. Methodology
2.1. Modelling diurnal reectance trends
For most remote sensing applications, the variation in surface
reectance as a function of solar position reduces the accuracy of a
data set and must therefore be minimised (Meyer et al., 1995). To
facilitate this, various models have been produced that use a Bidi-
rectional Reectance Distribution Function (BRDF) to describe the
reectance variation as a function of the illumination and view-
ing conditions. One such model, originally designed for use with
the MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), is
known as the MODIS direct broadcast BRDF algorithm(Lucht et al.,
2000; Schaaf et al., 2002). It utilises a BRDF that models the
reectance as a series of three mathematical expressions, known
as kernels, that each describe a particular scattering method. The
relative strength of each of the scattering modes is strongly depen-
dant upon the type of land being observed and hence it is possible
to gain information about the land surface by using the BRDF (Gao
et al., 2003; Diner et al., 2005). Water, in particular, displays a very
distinct set of scattering patterns and these can therefore be used
to identify areas that are wholly or partially submerged.
This BRDFalgorithmcombines threekernels inorder tocalculate
the surface reectance, R, at a wavelength for a given solar zenith
angle , viewing zenith angle and relative azimuth angle :
R(, , , ) = f
iso
()K
iso
+f
vol
()K
vol
(, , )
+f
geo
()K
geo
(, , ) (1)
The three kernel values are represented by K, with K
iso
being
equal to 1, whilst K
vol
and K
geo
are functions only of the solar
and viewing geometry and do not depend upon the land surface
reectance itself. The properties of the land surface are accounted
for by the BRDF parameters, f
iso
, f
vol
and f
geo
, that describe the sur-
face reectance as a function of the different scattering modes:
isotropic, volumetric and geometric. The isotropic parameter mea-
sures the reectance of the surface that is constant, no matter what
the geometrical conditions, andcanbe thought of as the reectance
that would be measured if both the sun and sensor were nadir to
the target. The volumetric parameter describes scattering within
objects such as tree canopies. Finally, the geometric parameter rep-
resents the reectance that can be modelled by scattering from a
series of discrete surface objects, such as buildings. By examining
a time series of surface reectance data and with knowledge of the
Suns position, it is possible to invert this model and hence derive
the values for each of the three parameters. Typically these param-
eter values are then used to normalise reectances to a common
set of viewing and illumination conditions, enabling the compari-
son of data gathered in different locations and at different times of
year. However, within this study the parameter values themselves
are used as the basis for the ood detection method the actual
reectances are discarded.
2.2. Data used in this study
To test the ability of the BRDF parameters to detect ooded land
a data source that supplies a large number of images within a short
space of time is required. Previously, the BRDF has been calculated
for instruments such as MODIS that provide a relatively high spa-
tial resolution but can only collect, at best, one or two images of
a particular region each day (Justice et al., 1998). To calculate the
BRDF a large number of observations is required, and thus data
gathered over many days must be combined in order to success-
fully retrieve the BRDF parameter values. Typically 8 or 16 days are
used to produce one BRDF (Schaaf et al., 2002), which results in
a highly accurate set of parameters but due to the long timescale,
transient events such as ooding or re may not be detected. To
overcome this, data fromthe MSG satellites canbe used to generate
the parameter values on a timelier basis. The high temporal reso-
lution of SEVIRI means that up to 60 sunlit observations of an area
can be recorded each day more than enough to generate the BRDF
parameters. However, tests showed that a 3-day acquisition time
was required. Using a shorter acquisition time resulted in much of
the image being obscured by cloud, whilst a 3-day period allowed
the land surface itself to be examined with only a fewunprocessed
pixels due to cloud cover. This is still a substantial improvement
on the MODIS 16 day timescale and should enable most ood-
ing events to be detected. As the SEVIRI pixel resolution is at best
3km/pixel, localised ooding may not be visible, although major
ooding events will still be seen. At worst, no ooding events cov-
eringanareaof less than9km
2
will bedetectedas ooded, although
depending upon the land cover for a pixel smaller oods may well
be detected. Additionally, the spatial resolution decreases as pixels
further from the subsatellite point are examined. In the extremi-
ties of Africa, such as Egypt and South Africa, resolution is closer to
5km/pixel. During normal operation the SEVIRI views an area cov-
ering Africa, Europe andthe ArabianPeninsula, but for the purposes
of this study only data from a portion of this scene, known as the
West Africa subset, was examined. This subset covers the area from
19

34

N, 19

W to 4

36

N, 8

15

E and many severe oods have

occurred within this subset over the past several years. Between
2002 and 2011 a total of almost 450,000 people were affected by 9
separate ooding events in Burkina Faso, with particularly severe
oods occurring in July 2007, September 2009 and July 2010 (EM-
DAT, 2011b). Neighbouring countries have also been hit by large
scale ooding. In the previous decade Mali experienced 11 events
that affected a total of more than 180,000 people, whilst 7 large
oods occurred in Niger affecting more than 470,000 people. For
the decade ending in 2009, West Africa as a whole experienced
105 major oods that resulted in around 1150 deaths and affected
nearly 3.5 million people.
Before ingestion into the BRDF algorithm, the SEVIRI top-of-
atmosphere reectances were masked to remove areas affected by
cloud cover by applying the EUMETCAST MPEF cloudmask that is
distributed along with the raw SEVIRI data. The reectances were
then corrected for atmospheric effects by using a modied ver-
sion of the Simplied Method for Atmospheric Correction (SMAC)
(Rahman and Dedeiu, 1994; Proud et al., 2010). Data was collected
between 0600 and 1800 UTC each day, a time span that covers
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538 S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544
Fig. 1. Locations of study areas and test sites in West Africa overlaid on a Blue Marble image fromNASAs Earth Observatory. Region A is the Inner Niger Delta, Region B is
in Burkina Faso, with precipitation stations highlighted by circles and Region C is the Niger River upstreamof Niamey. The test pixels 14 are, respectively, on the Sokoto
River (1), a grassland scene dominated by low-lying vegetation (2), a water-lled area in Lake Volta (3) and a sparsely vegetated scrub land pixel (4).
almost the entire sunlit period for West Africa. These images, along
withinformationabout the positionof the Sunfor eachimage, were
then fed into the inverse mode of the BRDF algorithmto produce
the BRDF parameters. Inturn, the parameters were fedbackintothe
model, this time operating in forward mode, to produce simulated
reectances for each time slot. The relative difference between the
measured and modelled reectances gives a good indication as to
the success of the BRDF algorithmat modelling the angular depen-
dence of the landsurface reectivity. As such, anytime slot inwhich
the relative difference exceeds 10% is ignored and the parameters
re-calculated with the remaining data. The nal result is a BRDF
model (made up of the Iso, Geo and Vol parameters) on a three day
timescale that accurately describes the angular sensitivity of the
land surface reectance to the three scattering modes described
previously. The three-day BRDFs are produced at the University
of Copenhagen on a semi-operational basis, beginning on January
1st of each year, meaning that 122 BRDFs are produced annually.
Production is not linked to ooding events, so if ooding is visible
within a 3-day period then it may have occurred on any of the three
days that make up that BRDF. All raw data are archived, however,
so to accurately determine the start of ooding events it is possible
to reprocess the data using different acquisition dates.
2.3. Study areas
To determine the parameter values that cansignify the presence
of ooded land, a pixel on the Sokoto River in Nigeria was chosen
as a test site, and is labelled as point 1 in Fig. 1. At this location,
the Sokoto River is situated on a ood plain approximately 10km
across, and the river is braided into many smaller waterways. The
ood plain is therefore clearly visible to MSG, but the river itself
is smaller than the 3km MSG pixel size, and so will only partially
inuence the measured reectance. The pixel is dry for much of the
year but betweenlateJulyandOctober theriver lls withwater and,
in2009, burst its banks oodingalargearea. Thepatternof diurnal
reectance in the dry, wet and ooded seasons was examined and
compared to other pixels nearby that represent known land cover
types. Point 2 in Fig. 1 is a typical grassland pixel, whilst point 3 is
a good example of a bare soil area and point 4 is a pixel covered by
water.
Furthermore, three regions were dened for use in a compar-
ison between the MSG ood mapping technique and a variety of
other methods, described in the following paragraphs, that have
been used to detect the presence of ooded land. All three regions
experienced one or more severe oods in 2009 and are labelled as
A, B and C in Fig. 1.
RegionAis locatedinMali, andcovers fromthe Inner Niger Delta
in North-Central Mali to the Burkina Faso border in the East. The
area (1316

N) belongs to the central and northern parts of the

Sahel and experiences a typical semi-arid climate. The rainy sea-
son extends fromJune to September (Roncoli et al., 2007), with July
and August being the wettest months. Annual rainfall ranges from
300mm/year in the northern part of the region to 500mm/year in
the South(Nicholson, 2005). However, the rainfall regime is charac-
terisedbygreat variabilityinbothtimeandspace, evenwithinshort
distances rainfall may be very different (Rasmussen et al., 2001).
Due to the presence of the Inner Niger Delta in this region ooding
is a common occurrence most frequently in August, September,
December and January as a result of both local rainfall and the
amount of water transported from other areas by the Niger River
itself (Diarra et al., 2004). For this site a comparison was made to
data gathered by the MODIS instrument at 500mresolution aver-
aged over an 8-day period, substantially longer than the MSG3-day
timescale. As most ooding in the Inner Niger Delta is caused by
the river rather than precipitation, there was at least one clear-sky
opportunity every 8 days that was usable to examine the land sur-
face with MODIS. The technique developed at the Dartmouth Flood
Observatory (Brakenridge and Anderson, 2006) was used to pin-
point the areas of land covered by water, with the areal extent of
surface water being output. This method compares the NDVI from
MODIS reectance data during a specic 8-day period to that gath-
ered at other times. By comparison to data gathered in previous
years it is possible to map the normal extent of a river during a
particular time period and compare it to the current extent. If the
extent is signicantly larger compared to previous years then it is
likely that ooding is occurring.
Area Bconstitutes the easternmost part of Burkina Faso, stretch-
ing from the Centre region in the North to the Centre-East region
in the South close to the border with Togo. The area (1013

N)
is situated in the southern part of the Sahel and experiences a
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S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544 539
semi-arid climate with a short rainy season, largely limited to the
months of July, August and September. The annual rainfall ranges
from500mm/year in the North of the region to 800mm/year in the
South and the general trend seen elsewhere in the Sahel towards
an increased annual precipitation in the last decade is also evident
in this region (Nicholson, 2005). The region differs from Mali as it
contains no signicant river system, meaning that any ooding is
primarily due to large amounts of precipitation within a short time.
Because of this, there is frequent cloud cover during the ooding
events and it is not possible to employ the MODIS instrument as
was used for Area A. Instead, precipitation data from3 sites spread
across AreaBwas averagedandusedas aproxy, as major rainevents
are typically accompanied by large ooding on a scale visible to
MSG (Bracken et al., 2008; Messager et al., 2006). The locations of
the three precipitation stations are marked by circles in Fig. 1.
Area C is a 7022kmcorridor along the Niger river upstreamof
the city of Niamey in Niger. In this area river owdata on the Niger
was compared to the MSG ood map. Data froma river station near
Niamey was provided by the Niger Basin Authority, allowing the
volume of water passing throughthe station(the river discharge) to
be comparedtothe oodedlandmappedby MSG. Suddenincreases
in the discharge can signal a ooding event, as the river may not
be able to contain the increased volume of water within its banks.
This means that a dependence of the ood area upon the differen-
tial of water discharge should be noticeable when examining data
gathered in Area C (Usachev, 1983; Smith et al., 1996).
3. Detection of ooded land
Within this study we examine the BRDF parameter values pro-
duced from diurnal trends in land surface reectance produced
by MSG. The physical basis for this approach to ood detec-
tion is straightforward, as water displays a very different diurnal
reectance curve to other land cover types. Because of this, the
BRDF parameters will vary dependant upon whether or not water
is present within a pixel. The isotropic parameter values specify
the reectance of the land surface and, as is expected, at times
when ooding occurs the land will display a markedly different
reectance to that seen outside of ooding events. By introducing
the volumetric parameter a measure of the variabilityinreectance
is gained. The variation in the geometric parameter is small in rela-
tion to the land surface type, and so is not used as an indicator of
ood extent. The following analysis examines this approach, and
shows that waterlogged areas of land display very different diurnal
reectance trends to dry areas. Because of this, they therefore show
a different value for the isometric andvolumetric BRDF parameters,
meaning that a combination of the isotropic and volumetric values
enables a clear signal of ooding events to be generated.
Fig. 2(a) shows the spectral characteristics of the Sokoto river
on the 4th April 2009: the dry season. At this time, the riverbed
is almost completely dry and much of the vegetation has died
back. This leads to diurnal reectance trends that very closely
match those for bare soil, as shown in Fig. 2(d), that contain low
reectances in the morning and evening with a reectance peak
near midday. Channel 3 displays much higher values than chan-
nels 1 and 2 due to the strong reectance of bare soil in the near-IR
(Jacquemoud et al., 1992). For a dry river the isotropic and volu-
metric parameters are shown in row 1 of Table 1. The isotropic
parameter is substantially higher than the volumetric value, and
typically somewhat higher than the maximumsurface reectance.
During the wet season the river lls with water, changing the diur-
nal reectance trend, as showninFig. 2(b) for the 15thAugust 2007.
Channel 3 reectances have decreased since the dry season, with a
peak of around 0.15, and the distinctive shape visible in the dry
season has been replaced by almost constant reectance values
throughout the day. Nevertheless, a small midday peak is visible
Table 1
BRDF parameters for the Sokoto pixel in three sets of conditions: dry season, wet
season and ooded land.
Case Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3
Iso Vol Iso Vol Iso Vol
Dry 0.284 0.019 0.436 0.021 0.602 0.021
Wet 0.195 0.055 0.453 0.070 0.522 0.167
Flood 0.201 0.018 0.421 0.046 0.375 0.092
for all channels, and in the morning there is a reectance increase.
Channel 1 displays a slight bowl shape in which the morning and
evening reectances are higher thanthose near midday. This is typ-
ical of grassland (Fig. 2(e)) and water (Fig. 2(f)). For channels 2 and
3 water and grass display opposing trends, with water showing a
slight bowl shape and grass presenting a small midday increase. A
combination of these two reectance trends results in the almost
at reectance trend visible during the wet season, and therefore
signies that the pixel contains both water and grassland. For wet
season conditions the parameters are located in row 2 of Table 1.
The channel 2 and 3 isotropic parameters are nowhigher than the
corresponding reectances, and the volumetric parameters in all
three channels are positive and non-negligible. The Sokoto river
broke its banks in late August 2009 and the new diurnal trend
is shown in Fig. 2(c). Channel 3 is now very low, and displays a
trend almost identical to the water pixel in Fig. 2(f). Channel 2 is
broadly similar to the normal wet season conditions, but is some-
what atter in the early morning, and channel 1 nowresembles its
diurnal trend present in Fig. 2(a). The large peak visible at 07.30
is due to cloudiness, not a surface feature. The change in channel
3 reectance trend is a good indicator of a substantial amount of
water being present. The reversion of the channel 1 trend to that
for bare soil indicates large amounts of sediment in the water, as
at this wavelength there is little difference in reectance between
wet and dry soil (Jacquemoud et al., 1992), unlike for channels 2
and 3. For this case the parameter values are in row 3 of Table 1.
The return of the channel 1 volumetric parameter to a value lower
than 0.05 is a useful ooding indicator. The isotropic parameters
in channels 2 and 3 have nowswapped over, with channel 2 being
higher than channel 3.
The BRDF parameters for the Sokoto Pixel are shown for 2009
in Fig. 3(a). It shows that the channel 1 volumetric parameter is
frequently less than 0.05, so it alone cannot be used as a ooding
indicator. However, it is also clear that at the time of the oods the
channel 1 isotropic parameter was low, whilst for channel 2 it was
high. Similarly, during the ooded period the channel 3 isotropic
parameter became lower than that for channel 2. By producing two
new indices, each known as a Water Index (WI), that are a combi-
nation of these parameters it is possible to pinpoint times when the
Sokoto is ooded:
WI
32
=
Iso
3
Vol
3
Iso
2
Vol
2
(2)
WI
21
=
Iso
2
Vol
2
Iso
1
Vol
1
(3)
where Iso
n
and Vol
n
are the isotropic and volumetric parameters
for channel n. The isotropic parameter describes the majority of
reectance variation caused by ooding, but by including the vol-
umetric terms in the indices the accuracy of ood detection was
increased. Even though the volumetric parameter is typically small
compared to the isotropic termit contains much information about
the shape of the reectance trend and hence the presence of
ooded land. This is demonstrated by the effects of the Vol
2
param-
eter on the Sokoto reectance trend. Fig. 3(b) shows the WI
32
and
WI
21
values for the Sokoto pixel. A strong ood signal is seen at
times when WI
32
is less than 0.9, WI
21
is greater than 2.45 and
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540 S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
a Dry season river
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
0.35
0.4
0.45
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
b Wet season river
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
c Flooded River
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
d Bare Soil
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
e Grassland
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
R
e
f
l
e
c
t
a
n
c
e
Time (hr)
Ch01 (600nm)
Ch02 (800nm)
Ch03 (1600nm)
f Water
Fig. 2. Diurnal reectance trends for a variety of land cover types. (a) Dry season river, (b) wet season river, (c) ooded River, (d) bare Soil, (e) grassland, and (f) water.
Vol
1
is less than 0.05, and these values can be used as thresholds to
indicate ooding.
By automated comparison of the two index values, WI
32
and
WI
21
, to their thresholds across a whole image, pixels that are
ooded should be highlighted, enabling the large scale detection
of ooded land. To examine the validity of this automated ood
detection, several test areas were dened in West Africa, allow-
ing analysis of the BRDF parameters in 2009. For all three test areas
there is a strong relationshipbetweenthe MSG derivedoodextent
and that measured by other sources.
4. Results and validation
4.1. Comparisons to polar orbiting satellite data
The Niger Delta study region, Area A, shows a correlation of
0.882 between the ood extent measured by the MSG parame-
ter method and that from MODIS, meaning that there is a good
t between the two techniques. Fig. 4(a) shows the variation in the
mapped ood area as a percentage of the entire 83,000km
2
area of
theregion. BothMSG andMODISshowlittleoodedlandduringthe
dry season with the exception of day 163 when MSG shows a spike
that is caused by cloud contamination. Fromday 200 the beginning
of the wet season is seen. Flooding becomes visible in the MSG data
on a small scale (approximately 12% of all observed pixels). The
MODIS data lags behind MSG due to its longer compositing period,
but a gradual increase in water-covered land is also visible. On day
241 there is a dramatic increase in the area of ooded land that cor-
responds both to the arrival of water from upstream on the Niger
and a series of heavy rainstorms in the preceding days. A peak is
thenseenonday247, withtheoodwaters graduallyrecedingafter
this day. The MODIS data showa similar trend, but the peak ood-
ing occurs on day 258, 11 days later than MSG. Again this is due to
the long compositing time for MODIS, with the actual peak ood-
ing occurring some time within the previous 8 days. This highlights
one of the primary drawbacks of using MODIS as a ood detection
tool. Using one day data means clouds are an issue, but in the 8-
day data the exact times at which ooding occurs becomes unclear.
The shorter compositing time of MSG helps overcome this limita-
tion. The actual areas detected as ooded by both methods closely
match, although an exact comparison is hampered by the differ-
ent temporal and spatial scales of MSG and MODIS. Over the entire
Journal Identication = JAG Article Identication = 404 Date: May 30, 2011 Time: 9:58pm
S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544 541
-0.3
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Flooding
WI32 WI21 NDVI
Fig. 3. Variation in MSG BRDF parameters and index values for the pixel on the
Sokoto River in Nigeria between January and October 2009. The two vertical lines
on each gure denote the extent of a period in which the Sokoto was known, from
local sources, to have ooded. (a) MSG BRDF Parameter Values for channels 1, 2 and
3, and (b) MSG Water and Vegetation Index Values.
year 85% of ooded pixels are detected by both MSG and MODIS.
During the wet season this is reduced to 82%, primarily due to the
obscuringinuence of clouds inthe MODIS images. Overall the MSG
time series ts well with the MODIS equivalent, although cloudi-
ness can cause unexpected changes in the area extent of ooded
land. Additionally, MODIS retains a better spatial resolution than
MSG (oneMSG pixel contains at least thirtysix500mMODISpixels)
but is let down by the long compositing time due to the infrequent
overpasses of the Aqua and Terra satellites that carry the MODIS
instrument. By using the MSG BRDF parameters instead there is
a gain in resolution within the temporal domain but a loss in the
spatial domain. As ooding events usually occur very rapidly this
increasedtemporal resolutioncanbe most useful inooddetection
and assisting those who have been affected by the ooding. The
over-estimation in ooded land by MSG evidenced within parts of
Fig. 4(a) also highlights another important point. The MSG BRDF
data is capable of being used to detect ooding events that are of
smaller spatial extent than the 9km
2
pixel size. Comparison with
the MODIS data shows that the MSG ood ag is raised, even if only
25% of the pixel is classed as inundated by MODIS. This means that
the ood area will be overestimated somewhat as the entire pixel
will be classied as ooded. By performing a more detailed pixel
examination it may be possible to extract a more accurate area for
the ooded land on a subpixel scale. For instance, by comparison
of the BRDF parameters at the time of ooding to those from a
non-ood period it may be possible to produce an estimate of the
fraction of the pixel affected by ooding.
4.2. Comparison of ooded area
Here the differences between the MSG and MODIS methods in
detectingoodedlandare examined. Fig. 5shows the mappedood
extent for the Inner Niger Delta (Area A in Fig. 1) on the 19th of
September 2009, which is a typical scene from this time of year
in terms of ood extent but is atypical in that it is one of the
-1
0
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8
150 180 210 240 270 300
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f

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c
e
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Day of Year (DOY)
MSG Flooded Area
MODIS Flooded Area
a The Inner Niger Delta in Mali. The ooded area
is calculated as a percentage of the whole region, and
the MODIS Area is relative to the water level on 1st
January. As MODIS is on an 8-day timescale there
can be a lag between the two data-sets, depending on
when in the 8-days the ooding occurred.
0
500
1000
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(
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m
)
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Major Flooding Event
in Ouagadougou
MSG Flooded Area
Precipitation
b Burkina Faso, from May 30th until October 27th.
A large spike is visible on day 245, signifying the se-
rious ooding experienced in Ouagadougou on that
day. A previous, but less well reported, ooding event
in other parts of Burkina Faso is visible on day 225.
0
90
180
270
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720
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150 165 180 195 210 225 240 255 270 285 300
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h
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(
m
3
/
s
)
Day of Year (DOY)
MSG Flooded Area
Niger discharge
c A 70x22km portion of the Niger upstream from
the city of Niamey showing the correlation between
ooded area and the discharge of the Niger River, as
measured by a station near Niamey. Sudden jumps in
the discharge are accompanied by a corresponding rise
in the MSG ooded area.
Fig. 4. Comparisonof the total size of the MSG oodedarea toa varietyof other ood
detection techniques for several test sites in West Africa during 2009. A percentage
is used rather than areal extent in (a) due to the differing spatial resolutions of
MODIS and MSG. (a) The Inner Niger Delta in Mali. The ooded area is calculated as
a percentage of the whole region, and the MODIS Area is relative to the water level
on 1st January. As MODIS is on an 8-day timescale there can be a lag between the
two data-sets, depending on when in the 8-days the ooding occurred. (b) Burkina
Faso, fromMay 30thuntil October 27th. Alarge spike is visible onday 245, signifying
the serious ooding experienced in Ouagadougou on that day. A previous, but less
well reported, ooding event in other parts of Burkina Faso is visible on day 225. (c)
A 7022km portion of the Niger upstream from the city of Niamey showing the
correlation between ooded area and the discharge of the Niger River, as measured
by a station near Niamey. Sudden jumps in the discharge are accompanied by a
corresponding rise in the MSG ooded area.
Journal Identication = JAG Article Identication = 404 Date: May 30, 2011 Time: 9:58pm
542 S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544
Fig. 5. A comparison of the graphical ood extent from both the MODIS and MSG detection methods on the 19th of September 2009 for Area A, the Inner Niger Delta. (a)
MODIS Channel 1 reectances, with the Inner Niger Delta in the center of the image. (b) The MSG and MODIS classication of ooded land for the Inner Niger Delta.
fewdays in which the majority of the area is cloud-free within one
of the two daily MODIS overpasses. Fig. 5(a) shows the Channel 1
reectance from the MODIS sensor aboard Aqua at 250m resolu-
tion, and it is noticeable in the North of the image (around 16

N)
that there is signicant cloudcontaminationwithinthe data, visible
as very bright areas. This is also noticeable close to 14

N, 3

30

W,
as well as in other smaller areas. The MODIS cloudmask was added
to the data in order to remove these areas from further analysis.
Fig. 5(b) shows the ood classications by both MSG and MODIS, in
which the MODIS data has been downscaled to the 3kmMSG spa-
tial resolution. Intotal 8822pixels withinthe scene are identiedas
non-ooded by both the MSG and MODIS methods, whilst 161 are
detected as ooded by both methods. The MSG method highlights
154 pixels as ooded that MODIS does not highlight, and 54 pixels
are agged by MODIS as ooded but not by MSG. All but one of
the 54 pixels agged only by MODIS are on the edge of a region
in which the MODIS data is cloud contaminated. The remaining 1
pixel was inspected manually and does indeed showa ooded area
that is not detected by the MSG method. Of the 154 pixels that only
MSGags as cloudy, 129 are in areas for which the MODIS data was
masked as cloudy, and therefore no ooding indicator was present.
16 out of the remaining 25 pixels seem to be false detections by
MSG, and all occur in areas that are covered by dense vegetation
that is close to the normal owarea of the river, indicating that the
methodmay require some additional work inorder to be successful
insuchconditions. Apossible solutionto this problemwouldbe the
implementation of a database of seasonal NDVI and BRDF parame-
ter values for each pixel. These could then be subtracted from the
measured data, which would leave only the residuals between nor-
mal andcurrent pixel conditions thus providing a clearer measure
of any ood signal that may be present. The down-side of this addi-
tionwouldbe that the methodno longer relies solely onthe current
MSG data, but will also require historical information.
The nal 9pixels aggedas oodedonly by MSG were examined
in the MODIS data and do appear to be ooded. These pixels are
also densely vegetated, but in this case the vegetation has raised
the NDVI above the threshold used within the MODIS method to
indicate ooding meaning that the MODIS ood map erroneously
lists these pixels as non-ooded.
This indicates that overall the MSG method is good at detecting
the spatial extent of ooded land when compared to the MODIS
method, with 86.56% of the 186 clear-sky pixels agged as ooded
by MSG also being agged by MODIS. An additional 4.84% of pixels
being successfully detected as ooded by MSG, but not by MODIS,
and 8.60%of pixels being false positives within the MSG data. These
false positives are highly correlated with land cover type, and so
modication of the parameter values, or the inclusion of NDVI or
land cover maps into the method, may well help to rectify the false
detections.
4.3. The relationship between MSG ooding and precipitation
For Area B the MSG data is compared to that from precipita-
tion stations, and the results are shown in Fig. 4(b). The correlation
between these two ood indicators is 0.58, signicantly less than
the MODIS to MSG correlation within Area A. This is caused by a
number of precipitation events that do not result in any ooded
land in the MSG ood map. Such rainfall is evident between days
170 and 180. It is possible that these rainfall events do not produce
a peak in ooded area as the land is very dry, enabling absorption
of large amounts of water and thus produce no signicant ood-
ing. Conversely, there is a ooding peak on day 206 that does not
correspond to a rainfall peak. This ooding peak is caused by the
MSG map showing signicant ooding at the southern edge of the
examinationarea, a locationnot coveredby any of the precipitation
gauges used within this study. Examination of precipitation mea-
surements from northern Ghana slightly outside the Southerly
extent of Area Bshows a peak inrainfall aroundthis day, however.
Additionally, analysis of monthly data from the Tropical Rainfall
Monitoring Mission (TRMM) shows a large amount of rain fell in
southern Burkina Faso at this time. The primary ooding events
of 2009 are both noticeable in the MSG and precipitation data.
The rst occurs on day 226, whilst the second is the more widely
known oods on day 244 that inundated much of the Burkinan
capital, Ouagadougou. For both ooding events there are peaks
in the MSG mapped area and in the precipitation, particularly for
the mid-August ood. It is therefore likely that the MSG mapped
ood locations do correspond to actual oods within the region,
Journal Identication = JAG Article Identication = 404 Date: May 30, 2011 Time: 9:58pm
S.R. Proud et al. / International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation 13 (2011) 536544 543
although the addition of more precipitation measurements cov-
ering a wider extent would increase the condence in MSG ood
mapping techniques in the Burkina Faso area. This highlights one
of the primary problems with using ground based measurements
for ood detection: Reduced spatial scale. Ground measurements
can be very useful, and also highly accurate, when examining small
areas that are prone to ooding but they are less useful on a region-
wide scale. Lack of data from some areas may mean that ooding
events are not recorded, whereas the large view afforded by MSG
allows ood monitoring that, whilst slightly less accurate, covers a
much broader area.
4.4. MSG detection of ooding resulting fromriver ow
For the nal area, C, along the Niger river the discharge and MSG
ooded area are shown in Fig. 4(c). Examination shows that two
rapid increases in river discharge that could signal a ood event
are noticeable. The rst occurs between days 227 and 229 when
the discharge increases from 550 to 900m
3
/s. At the same time
the area of ooded land increases from86 to 350km
2
and contin-
ues to increase for 6 days before peaking at 440km
2
, during which
time the Niger discharge remained almost constant. The ooded
area then shrinks until a minimum of 156km
2
on day 156. The
apparent decrease in area is because of the land surface character-
istics changing due to long termwater coverage, altering the BRDF
parameters andno longer producing the oodsignal. Another rapid
increase in river discharge occurs between days 255 and 263 and
again there is a corresponding rise in the ooded area, although the
peak ooded area is reached before the peak discharge. The BRDF
parameter based ood mapping method is best at detecting excep-
tional areas of ooded land rather than areas that are normally
water covered(suchas lakes), primarily due to the large amounts of
sediment present inoodwater. As withthe August oods the MSG
ooded area drops despite high discharge levels being retained,
again due to the transformation of surface reectance characteris-
tics. This area shows that it is possible to map ooding in a way that
closely matches the known state of a river, and it is clear that the
MSG technique is more suited to highlighting transient, short term,
ooding events rather than longer termwaterlogged landscapes.
5. Conclusion and perspectives
This studyhas shownthat it is possibletoderiveamap of ooded
landbasedupontheBRDF parameters producedfromdatagathered
by the MSG-SEVIRI instrument. While not yet ready for operational
use, the results derived fromthe BRDF parameters showa good t
to ooding events that have been detected through other means.
The MSG based BRDF method shows numerous advantages over
other techniques, however. The high rate at which the satellite cap-
tures land surface images can provide a much faster mapping of
ood events than is possible with other space instruments, such as
MODIS. Additionally, the fact that the satellite provides a continen-
tal scale viewsimultaneously means that ood mapping is possible
over a wide area. This is not achievable using ground based detec-
tion procedures such as precipitation measurements and river ow
data, as is illustrated in the case of the Burkina Faso study area.
Flood mapping using instruments such as AMSR-E is conned to
a coarse spatial resolution (De Groeve, 2010). MSGs 9km
2
resolu-
tion, whilst abletomap smaller oodingevents thanAMSR-E, is still
of insufcient quality to map small local scale ooding. However,
as has been shown in other studies (Herv et al., 2007), combining
the MSG data with those fromother sources, such as MODIS data at
500m resolution (Brakenridge and Anderson, 2006) or data from
the COSMO-SkyMed series of satellites (Caltagirone et al., 2002),
could avoid this issue and enable the high temporal resolution of
MSG to be fused with the high spatial resolution of other sensors.
Additionally, by a detailed investigation of known ooded areas,
more accurate knowledge of the BRDF parameters associated with
ooded land can be gained allowing adjustment of the threshold
values and increasing the accuracy of ood detection. By combin-
ing the BRDF parameter values with a land cover database it would
be possible to derive optimal thresholds on a per-pixel basis. This
may remove some of the false positives that are visible in the time
series, particularly for the Inner Niger Delta area. This BRDF based
ood detection scheme is also capable of detecting subpixel ood-
ing, evenif only 25%of a pixel is ooded. This enables more ooding
events to be detected, but naturally leads to an over-estimation in
the ooded area. Finally, although this technique has been demon-
strated in West Africa it is equally applicable in all areas covered
by hightemporal resolutionsatellite instruments. The Americas are
covered by the GOES series of satellites, whilst the Indian Subconti-
nent and surrounding area is viewed by the CCDinstrument aboard
INSAT-3A. By using these satellites in addition to MSG it is possible
to gain worldwide ood mapping for the tropical regions.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for
their useful and detailed comments that they provided during the
review process. The Niger Basin Authority (NBA) are thanked for
providing the Niger river discharge data to the African Monsoon
Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA) project, from where it was
retrieved for use in this study. Furthermore, they would like to
thank UNOSAT, the Dartmouth Flood Observatory and ReliefWeb
for providing background information on the 2009 West Africa
oods. H. Nieto is thanked for his assistance in producing the ood
maps usedwithinthis paper. C. Schaaf, Q. ZhangandtheBRDFgroup
at Boston University are thanked for their assistance in modifying
the MODIS BRDF algorithmto function with MSG data.
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