Improving SAR-based flood detection in arid regions using texture features

Abstract

Flood monitoring in arid regions is challenging using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) due to the similar backscatter of water and dry sand in surrounding areas. Since textural information is abundant in SAR images, this study investigates the added value of texture in SAR-based flood detection by providing it as auxiliary information for flood delineation. Results show that texture enhanced SAR images in VH polarization substantially underpredicts the flooded area, so adding texture does not improve the classification accuracy. However, using both polarization (VV and VH) produce $\sim26$% higher overall accuracy for flood detection in arid regions.