Maximizing Our Impact Through Data Sharing: UNOSAT Flood Portal

11 April 2016, Geneva, Switzerland – Today UNOSAT announces the official launch of its flood portal, a dedicated, free-to-use repository where anyone can easily find and download satellite-derived flood data in GIS vector format.

Data was extracted from satellite imagery by UNITAR-UNOSAT during more than 50 flood events occurring since 2006, with new data still being added as new floods occur. Satellite imagery used for these analyses comes from many different sources, including RadarSat-1, RadarSat-2, Sentinel-1, SPOT-5, TerraSAR-X, Landsat, ALOS PALSAR, ALOS-2 PALSAR-2, and others. In most cases these satellites were activated by UNITAR-UNOSAT under the auspices of the International Charter on Space and Major Disasters. Data is downloadable in various formats, thereby ensuring successful integration with most platforms. In addition, data can also be accessed via the Humanitarian Data Exchange and ArcGIS Online, facilitating use by the international disaster response and geospatial communities.

“Throughout the process of curating, compiling and releasing these flood data, our guiding principle has been to share high quality data in a user-friendly manner with all interested parties: government officials, humanitarian workers, volunteer mappers, hydrologists, academic researchers and refugee camp planners, to name but a few examples”, says UNOSAT’s Lars Bromley.

UN Photo by Logan Abassi after severe flooding in Haiti in 2012

The potential applications of the data we are sharing through the portal are wide-ranging: from disaster risk reduction to flood model calibration, land use, resource management, refugee camp planning, enhancing post-disaster field assessments and more. These data will allow users to identify flood-prone areas based on multi-year trends and patterns, thereby informing planning and preparation across multiple sectors.

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