Tag: flooding
Floods around the world as seen in Google Earth
by Timothy Whitehead on Oct.07, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
Flooding is a remarkably common phenomenon around the globe. Satellite imaging companies often try to capture imagery of the floods as such imagery is useful for governments and emergency services. DigitalGlobe, for example, has its First Look program through which it captures imagery and distributes it to emergency responders. Today we are looking at a few locations that we know about via the FirstLook program and where the imagery has since made its way into Google Earth. However, none of the imagery in today’s locations really captures the full scale of the events. This is due to a number of reasons:
- There is often no warning for floods. There may be warning for particular types of well-known weather systems such as cyclones and typhoons, or when there are heavy rains in a region the rivers downstream may be expected to flood. But even so, the severity of the flood is hard to predict.
- Floods follow rain and there are often cloudy conditions during and shortly after a flood, so it may take some time before there are suitable conditions for capturing imagery.
- In the case of flash floods the event is typically over before the location can be imaged, so all we can expect to see is the damage caused, such as houses or roads washed away.
- Google only puts high quality imagery in the default layer (more on this at the end of the post).
Eastern Sudan – July / August 2016
In late July and early August there were heavy rains and subsequent flooding in eastern Sudan. According to this article tens of thousands of people were affected and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed. There is a DigitalGlobe image of the town of Sennar and surrounding areas that was captured in response to the floods. Although there is a lot of standing water in the image, we could not find any flooded houses or evidence of houses washed away.
Skopje, Macedonia – August, 2016
In early August, 2016, Skopje Macedonia experienced severe flash flooding, killing at least 21 people. See this article for photos. In this case the imagery in Google Earth comes from CNES / Astrium. We can see some flooded areas, but the imagery does not quite cover the worst affected area (the northern parts of Chento).
Chetwynd, Canada – June, 2016
Chetwynd, Canada, experienced severe flooding in June, 2016 prompting a state of emergency to be declared. There is a DigitalGlobe image of Chetwynd captured after the event. Although we can see wet areas we could not find any washed away roads or bridges. We believe that the worst damage took place in areas not covered by the image.
Wuhan, China – July, 2016
The city of Wuhan was just one of many locations in China that experienced severe flooding in July. There is a CNES / Astrium image captured after the worst of the floods had already subsided, but the river is still very full, flooding some of the buildings along its banks.
In all the above locations we are looking at the imagery in the default layer. There is almost certainly more imagery hidden in ‘historical imagery’ that Google has chosen not to put in the default layer. However, Google has not updated ‘historical imagery’ since early June so we can’t see it. We should also mention Pekalongan City, Indonesia which experienced flooding in June, 2016. We can see bits of a Digital Globe image, but the parts we can see do not cover the affected area.
To see the locations above in Google Earth, download this KML file
. We have marked out the extent of the relevant imagery in each location.
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Louisiana flooding as seen in Sentinel imagery
by Timothy Whitehead on Aug.17, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
As we mentioned in Monday’s post, southern Louisiana is experiencing major flooding. One of the worst affected areas is to the east of Baton Rouge, where the Amite River has burst its banks, flooding several neighbourhoods.
We were able to find a Sentinel image captured on August 14th, 2016 which shows the extent of the flooding at that time.
Copernicus Sentinel data, 2016.
And zooming in a bit:
Copernicus Sentinel data, 2016.
To see the image in Google Earth, download this KML file
The original Sentinel image covers a lot more area than we have shown here or included in the KML, but much of the image includes thick cloud cover and we focused on the area with the worst flooding to keep the file size reasonable.
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What’s that Image: Fire, Flood and Mud
by Timothy Whitehead on Mar.21, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
Today we are having a look at some of the interesting imagery we have been able to find in the latest Google Earth imagery update.
In November last year there were a number of bush fires in South Australia. The imagery below shows the burn marks of one of those fires.
Drag the divider left and right to see the before and after images of a fire in South Australia.
December last year saw major floods in South America, including Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. One of the cities that were hit hard was Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. They had already experienced floods in July, 2015, which we have looked at before. Judging by the imagery available, the December flooding was worse.
Flooding in Asunción, Paraguay
Be sure to explore the imagery in Google Earth. By January 20th, 2016 the flood waters appeared to have subsided a little, but the area above was still flooded. There is a problem with the imagery for the area, with Google Earth sometimes switching to the January image as you zoom in, even if the time slider is set to a December date.
On November 5th, 2015, Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, was inundated in toxic sludge after a mine dam burst. We had a look at the imagery of the site in January. At the time we were able to follow the mud a little way downstream. More imagery further downstream has now been released, including some images of the mud entering the Atlantic Ocean.
To see the locations featured in this post in Google Earth download this KML file.
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Mississippi flooding
by Timothy Whitehead on Jan.06, 2016, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
Unseasonably warm weather in the eastern US resulted in tornadoes just before Christmas. In the following weeks high rainfall has lead to the upper Mississippi river and its tributaries experiencing flooding and the water is expected to continue causing floods as it flows south over the next few weeks. We looked around for satellite imagery and the best we could find is a very low resolution image from NASA’s Terra satellite featured in this article. We did try looking for Landsat imagery, but it takes Landsat 8 sixteen days to fully image the planet, which it does in strips and it is a matter of chance whether the location of interest is on a strip that has been imaged recently. In this case we found no recent Landsat 8 imagery for the area of interest.
If we look on Wikipedia, however, we find out that the flooding of the Mississippi is a common event with records going back hundreds of years. The most recent major floods were in 2010 and 2011.
We did look at some imagery ( 1, 2, 3 ) soon after the 2011 event but at the time there was no imagery in Google Earth. Since then, quite a lot of imagery has been added which shows the flooding and is worth taking a look at, as it can give us some idea as to what to expect this year.
McClure Illinois.
Road washed away near Cairo, Missouri.
Finley, Tennessee.
A flooded underpass near West Memphis, Arkansas.
Flooded golf course near Nashville, Tennessee.
To see the above locations and others in Google Earth, download this KML file.
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Flash floods in North Korea
by Timothy Whitehead on Dec.17, 2015, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
Normally when we look at satellite imagery of North Korea it is because there is something interesting relating to the politics of the country, such as statues, uranium plants or nuclear tests.
We recently came across this article about a flash flood event that struck the northern towns of Sonbong and Rason back in August 2015, so we had a look at the imagery. There is quite a lot to see. Luckily, the region is fairly sparsely populated, so there is not a lot of damage to infrastructure. Almost all the rivers in the region have clearly widened dramatically due to the flash flood.
What we found interesting is that many of the rivers seem to have flooded even though they have relatively small catchment areas. Normally, floods are most common for large rivers with large catchment areas, whereas these are mostly just streams a few kilometres long. Also the floods seem to have been confined to a relatively small area around the two towns and a bit further north, as we could not find signs of flooding further inland.
A bridge washed away.
Some houses washed away (we count 6).
To see the above locations and a number of other interesting sights in Google Earth download this KML file.
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First satellite imagery of flooding in southern India
by Timothy Whitehead on Dec.10, 2015, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
South eastern India has recently experienced major flooding. The floods have been caused by a combination of unusually high rainfall and a number of human factors, including unplanned urban development on former wetlands and other natural sinks and possibly poor reservoir management.
As they usually do for major disasters, Google has set up this Google Crisis Response page and also released some imagery from DigitalGlobe, which you can view on this map.
The imagery is black & white and rather cloudy, but the extent of the flooding can clearly be seen.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to view the images in Google Earth, so we hope they release a KML file as they have on previous occasions.
For more on the flooding and some photos see this article
Google has recently done an imagery update in Google Earth, but there is no recent imagery for the area affected by the floods. The update includes imagery up to November 30th, 2015.
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2015 Brazil floods in Google Earth
by Timothy Whitehead on Aug.07, 2015, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
Earlier this week we looked a flood damage in Georgia and Texas. Thank you to GEB reader for pointing us to imagery of flooding in Magdeburg, Germany in 2013. Find it in Google Earth with this KML file .
We have been aware for some time that there was major flooding in Brazil earlier this year, but have not until recently been able to find relevant imagery. We felt the need to include the year in our post title as a quick internet search revealed the fact that Brazil appears to have had severe floods nearly every year in recent history.
A small settlement near the town of Benjamin Constant, Brazil. Although it is certainly flooded, closer inspection reveals that there are raised walkways between the houses and high water levels are probably common. It is hard to tell from the satellite imagery whether the flooding was severe enough to have caused damage.
Coari, Brazil. Yet again, clearly flooded, but walkways exist in the flooded streets that can be seen in older imagery, suggesting flooding is common and prepared for.
Despite the flooding affecting a very large area (over 2000 km of river) we were only able to find a few relevant recent satellite images. However, we did discover the International Charter “Space and Major Disasters” and they have a number of recent satellite images of the area and before and after comparisons of the imagery – usually using Google Earth imagery for the “before” image.
To put them in context we have created a set of Placemarks for Google Earth with links to the relevant “before and after” comparisons. Download this KML file to view them in Google Earth.
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Flood damage in Google Earth
by Timothy Whitehead on Aug.04, 2015, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
We have looked at flooding a number of times in the past, including satellite and aerial imagery of flooding and its aftermath, crisis response maps, simulated sea level rise and most recently a data error resulting in a city appearing to be flooded.
Google has not released any ‘imagery updates’ maps since the release of the ‘Voyager’ layers at the end of June, so it is not easy to find new imagery. However, we have come across two sets of imagery related to flooding that we thought worth sharing.
The first one is an image of a zoo in Tbilisi, Georgia. When we first saw the story in the news of a number of zoo animals escaping during a flood, we found the location in Google Earth and saved a Placemark. Since then, we have been checking back regularly to see if it gets updated – and it has.
Tbilisi Zoo, Georgia, captured on June 18th, 2015, about 4 days after the flooding.
There are also several YouTube videos of wild animals roaming the city, including a tiger, a bear, a hippo and either a crocodile or alligator. Sadly, many animals were killed by the flood and some of the survivors had to be shot.
The second set of imagery is of Austin and Houston, Texas, captured between May 27th and June 1st, 2015. Austin, Houston and surrounding areas experienced heavy flooding a few days before the imagery was captured. However, the earlier imagery is too cloudy to see much and the flooding appears to have mostly dispersed by the later imagery. However, there is evidence of flood damage especially along the Blanco River southwest of Austin.
Fischer Store Road Bridge as pictured in this article
There is another bridge washed away further downstream and a number of houses have been damaged or washed away.
On Lake Travis, north of Austin, there are floating houses that are obviously designed to be able to move to some extent depending on water levels. However, some houses have been washed downstream due to the flooding.
Those purple roofed houses in midstream come from a location further upstream. See the KML file at the end of this post for the exact location.
We were unable to find any obvious signs of flood damage in Houston, Texas. If you find any please let us know in the comments.
Here is some drone footage of the Austin flood on YouTube.
For locations mentioned in this post download this KML file.
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Using Google Earth to predict sea level rise
by Mickey Mellen on Mar.18, 2014, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
A new study released recently by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the University of Innsbruck includes some impactful visualizations of what sea level rise could mean to various historic sites over the next 2000 years. Using Andrew David Thaler’s Drown Your Town technique, they created images such as this:
The reason for going 2000 years into the future was because “projections for global sea level rise during the next century vary widely, to smooth out any uncertainties in long-term forecasts.” To compound the problem, the Google Earth overlay for this can be inaccurate as Andrew mentioned on his site:
These are not perfect models of sea level rise, they are just useful (and entertaining) visualization tools. The topology in Google Earth is not perfect (you will find places where the sea itself is higher than you sea level rise layer).
All of that said, it’s still an interesting look at our possible future, and some of the images are very thought-provoking. You can check out the full article here or read the full study here.
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Falcon UAV drones assisting with flooding in Colorado – until FEMA stops them
by Mickey Mellen on Sep.17, 2013, under 3D Models, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, California, Denmark, England, Germany, Google Earth News, Google Earth Tips, Google Sky, Google maps, Hawaii, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Natural Landmarks, Netherlands, Sightseeing, Street Views, USA
A few days ago we shared the Boulder, Colorado crisis response map with you, as the area is continuing to be inundated with rain and flooding. As they continue to fight the water, another interesting battle is emerging: Falcon UAV against the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Falcon has a hand-launched drone aircraft that can fly for roughly an hour and automatically generate very accurate maps of the ground. Here is a quick video showing how the drone is launched:
As for the results, you can see a snippet of their work in Colorado below or download the KMZ file here (warning: 500MB) to see it in Google Earth. It’s quite remarkable, especially considering the speed with which the imagery can be captured, georeferenced and shared.
Unfortunately, FEMA has told them they’re no longer allowed to fly the drone. In fact, they were told that their “request to fly drones was not only denied but more specifically we were told by FEMA that anyone flying drones would be arrested.”
As IEEE Spectrum is quick to point out, we’re only hearing one side of the story. FEMA may have a very legitimate reason for grounding the drone. However, considering all circumstances it seems that it would be quite valuable to have that aircraft capturing fresh imagery for the area.
I’m hoping that FEMA releases a statement of some sort about this issue, as it’s reflecting quite poorly on them so far. Check out the full article for yourself over on IEEE Spectrum.
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