21 September 2018
Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina at 7:15 AM on Friday (14 September 2018) as a Category 1 hurricane. This blog summarises some of our existing information products and new analytics that can be used to help assess the impact of this major event.
1. Location profile report and animation for low-lying coastal addresses
For any location in the Contiguous US, we provide two web pages (Link 1 and Link 2, with Google Maps embedded) to allow users to request site-level location profile report and animation automatically. We also offer APIs for independent developers to integrate such resources.
Examples for some representative low-lying coastal areas affected by this event are shown below (click Twitter pictures for more links).
Site-level location profile report for #Wilmington Beach, North Carolina#Hurricane #Florence #HurricaneFlorence pic.twitter.com/xdcCHLFdQH
— BigData Earth (@BigDataEarth) September 14, 2018
2. Inland flooding
The unprecedented heavy rainfall induced by the Hurricane Florence has caused widespread inland flooding, spanning from North Carolina to South Carolina. We quickly performed some flood analytics using satellite imagery, modelled flood maps and a unique building footprint dataset recently released by Microsoft for the public. Six perspectives were offered.
– The big picture for the region impacted, with before & after imagery: MODIS corrected reflectance bands 7-2-1 and Sentinel2 false colour bands 8-4-3
– OBSERVED flooding in Lumberton, North Carolina: Before (2018-09-06) and after (2018-09-18) imagery. With the new satellite imagery available, flood extent for the whole region can be readily detected.
– MODELLED flood-prone areas according to the FEMA National Flood Hazard Layer (AEP 1%)
– COMPARISON between OBSERVED and MODELLED flood areas. Please note their correspondence and differences. Sometimes they could be very different; observed data can be used to validate modelling results.
– By superimposing Microsoft building footprints, the total exposure at risk can be more accurately estimated.
– Site-level location profile reports enabled by Web APIs and Web Services, as a new effort to advance flood risk analytics. Please refer to a recent R&D article from us: Introducing Three New Tools for Investigating Flood-prone Areas in the U.S. and Australia
Impact of #HurricaneFlorence
Widespread #flooding spanning from North Carolina to South Carolina
– Before & after imagery #MODIS corrected reflectance bands 7-2-1, by NASA WorldView#Sentinel2 false colour bands 8-4-3, by EO Browser@NASAEarthData @CopernicusEU @sentinel_hub pic.twitter.com/zMXdpOaDZQ— BigData Earth (@BigDataEarth) September 19, 2018
Impact of #HurricaneFlorence – Widespread #flooding from North Carolina to South Carolina
1. Large-sized, post-event #Sentinel2 imagery mosaics (natural & false-colour)
Resolution: 10m
Image size: 36,832 x 32,205 pixels
Projection: UTM18N/WGS842. Zoomed views for flooded areas pic.twitter.com/kuWIK2AkjE
— BigData Earth (@BigDataEarth) September 20, 2018
Impact of #HurricaneFlorence – Widespread #flooding spanning from North Carolina to South Carolina
1. More accurate exposure analysis
2. Site-level location profile reports enabled by Web APIs & Web Services, as a new effort to advance flood risk analyticshttps://t.co/f1nODn2tai pic.twitter.com/ujAo5xMKzB— BigData Earth (@BigDataEarth) September 19, 2018
3. Environmental impact on coastal waters
#HurricaneFlorence Impact of flooding on coastal waters in North Carolina
1. Large-scale contamination
2. Polluted water contains a high concentration of organic material & nutrients, probably related to the waste from flooded hog farms etc. in the floodplain.#Landsat #Sentinel2 pic.twitter.com/Rz6ehdaPbQ— BigData Earth (@BigDataEarth) September 21, 2018