Remote Sensing, Vol. 9, Pages 313: Flood Monitoring Using Satellite-Based RGB Composite Imagery and Refractive Index Retrieval in Visible and Near-Infrared Bands (Remote Sensing)

Satellite remote sensing provides significant information for the monitoring of natural disasters. Recently, on a global scale, floods have been increasing both in frequency and in magnitude. In order to map the inundation area, flooding events are investigated using unique RGB composite imagery based on the MODIS surface reflectance (MOD09GA) data obtained from the Terra satellite, which is used to visualize and analyze these events. This study proposes using an RGB combination of MODIS band 6 (1.64 ?m), band 5 (1.24 ?m), and band 2 (0.86 ?m) data from the visible and the near-infrared spectral ranges to map flood events. The flooding events that were investigated in this study occurred on 25 October 2015 along the Pampanga River in the Philippines, and on 28 July 2016 along the Poyang and Dongting Lakes in China. In the case of the Pampanga River, the inundated areas were estimated with surface reflectance (R) thresholds of 0.0