Chapter 5

Mapping Punjab Flood using

Multi-temporal Open-Access Synthetic
Aperture Radar Data in Google Earth
Engine

Gagandeep Singh and Ashish Pandey

5.1 Introduction

Floods are one of the most severe catastrophic natural calamities which cause
unprecedented destruction all around the world. According to the Global Assess-
ment Report (2019) on Disaster Risk Reduction, between the years 1997 and 2017,
floods have affected 76 million people. Floods can be described as the presence
of water on dry land. The causes of that flooding can be excessive precipitation,
snowmelt that occurs in a short time interval, a dam break, a storm surge, inadequate
water management practices, etc.
India is second in absolute terms of people killed by floods, but relatively several
other countries have more casualties per million inhabitants by floods than India.
India is an agriculture-based economy, and its economic growth has always been
under the influence of the weather, especially extreme weather events (Vishnu et al.
2019). Besides heavy agricultural losses, such extreme events also result in huge
losses of life, property, and unrest in economic activities.
Punjab is a state in northwestern India. It covers an area of 50,362 km2 , i.e.,
1.53% of India’s total geographical area. Continuous and heavy rainfall in August
2019 caused widespread destruction in several districts of Punjab along the banks
of the Sutlej and Beas Rivers. Districts of Amritsar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ferozepur,
Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Moga, Mohali, Patiala, Roopnagar,
and Sangrur were among the most severely affected.

G. Singh (B) · A. Pandey

Department of Water Resources Development and Management, Indian Institute of Technology
Roorkee, Roorkee 247667, Uttarakhand, India
e-mail: gsingh@wr.iitr.ac.in
A. Pandey
e-mail: ashish.pandey@wr.iitr.ac.in

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license 75
to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Pandey et al. (eds.), Hydrological Extremes, Water Science
and Technology Library 97, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59148-9_5
76 G. Singh and A. Pandey

A critical element during an ongoing flood event is flood inundation assessment,

which forms a crucial component to formulate damage relief plans, damage assess-
ment, estimation and distribution of compensations, and selecting appropriate plan-
ning and land use in the flood-affected area (Ran and Nedovic-Budic 2016; Vishnu
et al. 2019). Satellite remote sensing data products are exceptional resources in flood
mapping as they offer impeccable advantages of synoptic views and reviews. Optical
remote sensing data products are not very useful to monitor flood-affected areas in
case of an ongoing event due to the presence of cloud cover, which creates a hindrance
for data retrieval in visible and near-infrared regions. Microwave remote sensing data
products have an advantage of all-weather, day-night coverage with cloud penetra-
tion capability (Amitrano et al. 2018; Plank et al. 2017; Martinis 2017; Twele et al.
2016; Uddin et al. 2019). Therefore, active radar sensors operating in the microwave
band are the most preferred choice for flood inundation mapping. Hence, sentinel-
1 dataset was used in this study to map flood-affected areas in Punjab during and
following the August 2019 event.
From a radar perspective, flooding can be defined as an occurrence of temporary or
permanent water surface either underneath a tall or short vegetation cover regardless
of whether it is forest or agriculture or just open water. Flood maps can help monitor
the inundation extent and dynamics for disaster assessment and management. The
radar backscatter mechanism that is primarily relevant in terms of flood inundation
(Hess et al. 1990) is a key aspect to be discussed at this juncture. The specular
scattering occurs in the case of a smooth water surface wherein the signal is scattered
away from the satellite sensor, which results in the appearance of open water as very
dark in the satellite image (Lillesand et al. 2015). Rough surface scattering occurs
when there is some level of roughness in the water surface due to the presence of short
floating vegetation, wind, or heavy rainfall resulting in the signal getting scattered in
different directions but mostly away from the satellite sensor. Such areas appear dark
but not as dark as the completely smooth water surface. The rougher the surface, the
larger the signal scattered back to the satellite and brighter that pixel will appear on
the image. Double bounce scattering occurs when two smooth surfaces create a right
angle and deflect the incoming radiation causing most of the radiation returning to
the sensor (Lillesand et al. 2015). These areas appear very bright in the image. This
type of scattering is commonly observed in the case of flooded vegetation, which
acts as a vertical surface to the horizontal water surface. It is a characteristic of urban
areas.
Another important concept related to microwaves is polarization. Polarization is
the plane of propagation of the electric field of the signal, which can be either in
the horizontal or vertical plane (Lillesand et al. 2015). Irrespective of wavelength,
radar signals can be transmitted and/or received in different modes of polarization,
and there are four combinations of both transmitted and received polarizations. These
are HH-horizontally transmitted, horizontally received, HV-horizontally transmitted,
vertically received, VH-vertically transmitted, horizontally received, VV-vertically
transmitted, vertically received. The penetration depth of the radar signal is influenced
by polarization.
5 Mapping Punjab Flood using Multi-temporal Open-Access … 77

Looking to the aforementioned, the main objective of this study is to demonstrate

the potential use of Sentinel-1 SAR images in the cloud-based platform of Google
Earth Engine for flood inundation mapping. The operational methodology applied
in this study is used to quantify the areal extent of the flooded area.

5.2 Material and Methods

5.2.1 Study Area

Figure 5.1 shows the study area which comprises 12 districts, namely, Amritsar,
Fatehgarh Sahib, Ferozepur, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Ludhiana, Moga,
Mohali, Patiala, Roopnagar and Sangrur in the State of Punjab which lies between
29° N to 32°30 N latitude and the 73° E to 77° E longitude. The total area of the
selected districts is 28,386.73 km2 . The study area is a part of the Indo-Gangetic
alluvial plain. The area is drained by two perennial rivers Sutlej and Beas (Chopra
and Sharma 1993).
Analysis of SRTM DEM for the flood-affected districts in the state shows that the
elevation in the area varies from 143 to 777 m AMSL.
Out of a total area (flooded districts) of 28,386.74 km2 , 40.03% area lies in the
elevation range of 143–230 m. 44.02% of the total area lies in the elevation range of
230–260 m. 14.15% of the total area falls under an elevation range of 260–330 m, and

Fig. 5.1 Location map of the study area

78 G. Singh and A. Pandey

a mere 1.8% area lies in the high elevation range of 330–777 m. This gives a decent
overview of the terrain and signifies that more than 80% of the area has minimal
changes in the elevation. Apart from 1.8% area, which can be classified under a high
elevation range, the remaining terrain is plain.

5.2.2 Data Used

In this study, Sentinel-1 dataset was used to obtain the flood inundation areas in
various districts of Punjab. Dual-polarized (VV and VH) Sentinel-1 SAR images
acquired from March 13, 2019 to June 13, 2019 were utilized for before the flood
event analysis and SAR images acquired from August 21, 2019 to August 31, 2019
were used for after flood event analysis. In this study, dual-polarized (VV and VH)
of 5 × 20 m resolution (10-m pixel spacing) Level-1 Ground Range Detected (GRD)
Sentinel-1 SAR datasets acquired in Interferometric Wide Swath (IW) mode were
used. Additionally, SRTM DEM of 30-m spatial resolution was used for the extraction
of elevation zones within the state.
The sentinel-1 data is a C-band synthetic aperture radar data. GEE has the entire
Sentinel-1 database. It is being provided by the European Space Agency using two
satellites Sentinel-1A and 1B, which individually offer global coverage of 12 days.
Besides, global coverage of 6 days over the equator is obtained using data from
both satellites. There are four different modes in which the satellite sensors acquire
Sentinel-1 data. These are Extra Wide Swath Mode, which is being exclusively
used for monitoring oceans and coasts; Strip Mode, which is operated by special
order only and is intended for special needs; Wave Mode, which is used for the
routine collection for the ocean; and Interferometric Wide Swath Mode, which is
used for routine collection for land (this mode is exclusively used for flood mapping
applications).

5.2.3 Methodology

In this study, the Sentinel-1 SAR datasets were processed using Google Earth Engine,
which is a cloud-based geospatial processing platform and is being used widely to
analyze the Earth’s surface. GEE provides a massive collection of time-series satellite
data products and geospatial datasets all for free and hosted on the cloud. GEE also
provides a Javascript-based code editor wherein codes were developed to datasets
retrieval, processing, and flood inundation mapping.
Methodology flowchart for inundation mapping is presented in Fig. 5.2. The Area
of Interest (AOI) was selected in the GEE code editor platform by importing the
shapefiles of the flood-affected districts. Once the shapefiles were loaded, the next
step was to load the preprocessed sentinel-1 data from the public data archive of the
5 Mapping Punjab Flood using Multi-temporal Open-Access … 79

Fig. 5.2 Flowchart depicting the adopted methodology

GEE. Various filters (instrument mode, transmitter/receiver polarization, orbit pass,

resolution, and AOI) were applied to create and load in the image data collection.
The first filtering for Sentinel-1 data collection was defined to load the SAR
Ground Range collection with Interferometric Wide (IW) instrument mode, VV and
VH polarization, and a descending orbit pass for the previously defined AOI.
After that, a second filter was defined to select the above-filtered data for specific
dates. Therefore, the above-obtained dataset collection was further filtered by date
for before and after the flood event. To collect the images for “before the event,” the
“from” and “to” dates were chosen from March 13, 2019 to June 13, 2019. To collect
the images for “after the event,” the “from” and “to” dates chosen were August 21,
80 G. Singh and A. Pandey

2019 to August 31, 2019. The filtered image collections for before and after flood
events were mosaicked, respectively, to create a single image in both VV and VH
polarization modes. A total of four images were ready for post-processing as shown
in Fig. 5.3a–d. All the four images were then processed to remove speckle (noise
reduction). For this, a focal mean smoothing filter was applied with a radius of 50
pixels. The resultant speckle-free images obtained for VH polarization shown in
Fig. 5.3e, f were further used to calculate the difference between before and after the
flood as shown in Fig. 5.4 to find the inundated areas. The after flood mosaicked image
was divided by the before flood mosaicked image to obtain a new image with flood
inundated areas. To prominently highlight the flooded areas, a mask was created
using a difference threshold value of 1.25. Finally, the VH polarization threshold
difference image was exported to compute the areal extent of the flooded area in
each district as well as in the entire AOI.

5.3 Result and Discussion

The incessant rains in August 2019 caused severe floods in Punjab, wherein 12
majorly affected districts have been mapped for areal assessment of flood inundation.
Google Earth Engine (GEE) was used to conduct the entire satellite image processing,
as explained in the methodology. A total of 28,386.72 km2 area of Punjab was selected
as the area of interest for the study.
The final flood inundation map derived after processing the sentinel-1 SAR images
is presented in Fig. 5.5. An area of 205.2 km2 is mapped as flooded in the analysis and
is represented in white color. The non-flooded area of 28,181.54 km2 is displayed in
black and the river flowing through the study area designated in blue color. Further-
more, a district-wise flooded and non-flooded area assessment was carried out and
is presented in Table 5.1. The results obtained are in line and comparable with the
inundated area assessment report prepared by the Punjab Agricultural Department.
As per this report, 240 km2 were submerged in 12 districts of the state. The report
also states that Jalandhar and Kapurthala were the two most affected districts.
Out of the 12 districts Kapurthala, Ferozpur, Jalandhar, and Moga were the most
affected ones. Figures 5.6 and 5.7 show the flood inundation in each of the 12 districts.

5.4 Conclusion

This study demonstrated the use of Sentinel-1 SAR data for near real-time flood
inundation mapping. During monsoon season, the availability of cloud-free optical
satellite data products is rare and occasional. SAR data offers a remarkable advantage
of capturing data in all weather conditions due to which it serves as the best data
source to observe and map flood inundation in near real time.
5 Mapping Punjab Flood using Multi-temporal Open-Access … 81

Fig. 5.3 Outputs of Sentinel-1 data processing in GEE platform a before flood VV, b before flood
VH, c after flood VV, d after flood VH, e before flood speckle removed, f after flood VH speckle
removed
82 G. Singh and A. Pandey

Fig. 5.4 Difference image VH in GEE platform

Fig. 5.5 Flood inundation map of the area of interest

5 Mapping Punjab Flood using Multi-temporal Open-Access … 83

Table 5.1 District-wise flooded and non-flooded area assessment

S. No District Flooded area (km2 ) Non-flooded area (km2 ) Total area (km2 )
1 Amritsar 3.59 2606.42 2610.01
2 Fatehgarh Sahib 7.52 1165.27 1172.79
3 Ferozepur 27.02 2471.33 2498.34
4 Gurdaspur 1.64 2574.46 2576.10
5 Jalandhar 45.89 2554.90 2600.78
6 Kapurthala 42.13 1614.42 1656.55
7 Ludhiana 35.66 3531.71 3567.37
8 Moga 25.18 2275.36 2300.54
9 Mohali 0.91 1087.22 1088.13
10 Patiala 6.40 3328.03 3334.43
11 Roopnagar 2.05 1378.81 1380.86
12 Sangrur 7.21 3593.61 3600.82
Total 205.2 28,181.54 28,386.72

Fig. 5.6 Flood inundation maps for Amritsar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ferozpur, Gurdaspur, Jalandhar,
and Kapurthala Districts of Punjab

Based on the results obtained, it can be concluded that the freely available Sentinel-
1 SAR data has immense potential for rapid flood mapping and monitoring. GEE can
be effectively used for planning disaster risk reduction and, damage assessment in the
flood affected areas, and can be used well along with land-use land cover information.
84 G. Singh and A. Pandey

Fig. 5.7 Flood inundation maps for Ludhiana, Moga, Mohali, Patiala, Roopnagar, and Sangrur
Districts of Punjab

Acknowledgements We wish to express a deep sense of gratitude and sincere thanks to the Depart-
ment of Water Resources Development and Management (WRD&M), IIT Roorkee, for providing
a conducive environment and resources to conduct the research work.
We acknowledge the European Space Agency (ESA) for providing Sentinel-1 SAR data. We
are also grateful to Google LLC for offering the Google Earth Engine platform.

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