Large-scale flood detection in the Pearl River basin based on GEE and time-series Sentinel-1 SAR images

Due to its wide scope, rapid development and high hazard, remote sensing images with a single time phase and local area coverage cannot meet the needs of large-scale flood detection. The problem of large-scale flooding emergency detection can be well solved by using Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform, which has the characteristics of fast data computing speed, easy image retrieval and rich remote sensing data. In this paper, we propose a method for flood detection using Sentienl-1 imagery based on the GEE platform, which can quickly accomplish a large scale flood detection. The method was validated in a flooding event that occurred around the Pearl River basin, China in June 2022. It shown that using the proposed method can not only meet the needs of basin-wide flood detection, but also extract information on the temporal dimension of the flood development status.