Simultaneous observation data of GB-SAR/PiSAR to detect flooding in an urban area

Abstract

We analyzed simultaneous observation data with ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GB-SAR) and airborne SAR (PiSAR) over a flood test site at which a simple house was constructed in a field. The PiSAR σ° under flood condition was 0.9 to 3.4dB higher than that under nonflood condition. GB-SAR gives high spatial resolution as we could identify a single scattering component and a double bounce component from the house. GB-SAR showed that the σ° difference between the flooding and non flooding conditions came from the double bounce scattering. We also confirm that the entropy is a sensitive parameter in the eigenvalue decomposition parameters, if the scattering process is dominated by the double bounce scattering. We conclude that σ° and entropy are a good parameter to be used to detect flooding, not only in agricultural and forest regions, but also in urban areas. We also conclude that GB-SAR is a powerful tool to supplement satellite and airborne observation, which has a relatively low spatial resolution. © 2010 ManabuWatanabe et al.