Application development for the utilisation of ENVISAT data in remote sensing based regional flood/waterlog and drought monitoring

Natural disasters connected to climatic extremities (floods, waterlog and drought) tend to occur more frequently in Hungary in the past decade. Serious waterlog affecting more than 100 000 hectares of arable land, flood peak records during spring and serious drought in summer causing losses to agriculture and to the whole economy happened yearly between 1998-2002. After the development and application of monitoring methods, FOMI RSC have started to develop a cost-effective satellite based model to monitor these natural disaster at regional level. The ESA-FOMI Prodex-ENVISAT R&D project titled "Application development for the utilisation of ENVISAT data in remote sensing based regional flood/waterlog and drought monitoring (2000-2003)" aimed at the rapid and large scale monitoring of these disasters utilising available low- and medium resolution operational satellite data (NOAA AVHRR, SPOT VEGETATION, IRS-IC/1D WiFS and ERS SAR) involving the new ESA ENVISAT data. This paper describes the present status of the project and shows several examples about the achievements.