Assessment of flood with regards to land cover changes

Floods seem to be more and more a serious problem in the Czech Republic. Geographical occurrence of floods has become less predictable recently, since flash floods have the main role at the beginning of flood events. Flash flood has a bigger impact to our environment than ordinary floods, as municipalities are prepared in most cases for the ordinary ones. Land cover type is an important factor due to its influence on the precipitation water runoff for a decision what kind of crop is suitable for a given region. This choice can substantially affect the future impact of floods (e.g. corn is a crop which can negatively influence the area during the flash floods). The second problem is an expansion of crop to forest areas ( deforestation). This process has also a negative impact on influence of upcoming flash flood. The paper deals with assessment of land cover type with regard to its possible impacts on flash flood impacts when the main danger does not come from the river but from hillsides around urban areas and assessment of flood with regards to land cover changes. In this paper, the available remote sensing data will be analyzed for this task as well as the analysis of available technology which can be used in areas where the data from remote sensing cannot be used in the required time frame or quality - for example which kind of data from field surveying will be needed or if there is an opportunity for using UAV. The paper will serve as a basic source for future analyses where individual issues will be analyzed. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.