Flood monitoring and mapping using passive microwave remote sensing in Namibia

Space-based river monitoring can provide a systematic, timely and impartial way to detect disastrous floods. This paper presents a new processing method for such data, resulting in daily flood magnitude time series for any arbitrary observation point on Earth, with lag times as short as 4h. This results in a daily update of major floods in the world, with an objective measure for their magnitude, useful for early humanitarian response. The technique is demonstrated on the 2009 floods in Southern Africa and the 2010 flood season in Namibia.