Author(s)

K. Okamoto & H. Kawashima

Abstract

Role of satellite remote sensing in monitoring system for environmental disasters related to water resources K. Okamoto1 & H. Kawashima2 1 National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Japan. 2 Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Tokyo, Japan. Abstract Remote sensing technologies have enabled rapid collection of data on environmental disasters where contemporaneous field observations are unavailable or incomplete. We focus on satellite-remote-sensing-based approaches to monitor environmental disasters caused by surplus or deficient water resources, and outline methods to detect events and evaluate the damage caused by them. These disasters include flood and drought. Flood can be detected easily from the remote sensing image based on the salient characteristics of spectral reflectance or the backscattering coefficient. The occurrence of a drought can be predicted from a combination of some indices based on the satellite remote sensing data and meteorological data. However, many problems remain as to how to effectively predict a disaster and avert its damage before the disaster actually occurs, using a combination of remote sensing techniques, geographical information system (GIS) and administrative frames. 1 Introduction To help us determine how best to match supply with demand, it is important

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