Tracking where floods damage settlements and how rebuilding changes risk over time.
A multi-temporal Earth observation study linking flood events to built-environment damage, recovery and the persistence of exposure in vulnerable settlements
Project overview
This project uses satellite time series to examine how major floods reshape settlements and how reconstruction unfolds after disaster. It will combine flood-event mapping with analysis of built-up areas, land cover, roads and settlement form to identify where damage concentrates, how quickly affected areas recover and whether rebuilding reduces or reproduces exposure.
Sentinel-1 radar imagery will support flood extent mapping even under cloudy conditions, while Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery will be used to analyse built-environment and land-cover change over time. Open and municipal spatial datasets may be incorporated to improve interpretation at settlement scale. The resulting indicators will describe loss, recovery rate, rebuilding location and repeated exposure within flood-prone corridors.
Key activities
Map selected flood-event footprints using before, during and after satellite imagery.
Develop consistent built-up and land-cover layers for pre- and post-flood periods.
Detect damage, disturbance, rebuilding and settlement expansion over time.
Derive indicators of loss, recovery rate, exposure persistence and encroachment.
Validate findings using field observations, available records and high-resolution imagery.
Expected outputs
Event-specific flood extent maps.
Built-environment and land-cover change maps.
Recovery and reconstruction trajectory indicators.
Maps of repeated exposure and rebuilding in flood-prone areas.
Planning briefs and academic outputs on flood damage and recovery dynamics.
Why this project matters
Flood studies frequently end with a single event footprint. This project extends the analysis into the recovery period, providing evidence on whether settlements rebuild more safely or return to the same high-risk locations.