896 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL.
13, 2020
Probabilistic Mapping of August 2018 Flood of
Kerala, India, Using Space-Borne
Synthetic Aperture Radar
Sonam Futi Sherpa , Manoochehr Shirzaei , Chandrakanta Ojha, Susanna Werth , and Renaud Hostache
Abstract—Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging provides an
all-weather sensing technique that is suitable for near-real-time
mapping of disasters such as floods. In this article, we use SAR
data acquired by Sentinel-1A/B satellites to investigate a flood event
that affected the Indian state of Kerala in August 2018. We apply
a Bayesian approach to generate probabilistic flood maps, which
contain for each pixel its probability to be flooded rather than
binary flood information. We find that the extent of the flooded
area begins to increase throughout Kerala after August 8, with the
highest values on August 9 and August 21. We observe no apparent
correlation between the spatial distributions of the flooded areas
and the rainfall amounts at the district level of the study area.
Instead, larger flooded areas are in the districts of Alappuzha and
Kottayam, located in the downstream floodplain of the Idduki dam,
which released a significant volume of water on August 16. The
lack of apparent correlation is likely due to two reasons: first, there
is often some delay between the rainfall event and the flooding,
especially for rather large catchments where flood waves need some
time to reach floodplains from higher elevations. Second, rainfall
is more abundant at overhead catchments (hills and mountains),
whereas flood occurs further downstream in the floodplains. Fur-
ther comparison of our SAR-based flood maps with optical data
and flood maps produced by moderate resolution imaging spectro-
radiometer highlights the advantages of our data and approach for
rapid response purposes and future flood forecasting.
Index Terms—Kerala 2018 flood, probabilistic flood map,
synthetic aperture radar (SAR).
I. INTRODUCTION
XTREME flooding due to natural or anthropogenic causes
E poses a significant threat to human society, economy, and
Manuscript received October 26, 2019; revised December 24, 2019 and Jan-
uary 19, 2020; accepted January 20, 2020. Date of publication February 17, 2020;
date of current version March 17, 2020. The work of Sonam Futi Sherpa and
Manoochehr Shirzaei was supported in part by NASA Grant 80NSSC170567.
Chandrakanta Ojha and Susanna Werth are supported by NASA under Grant
NNX17AD98G. The work of Renaud Hostache was supported in part by the
National Research Fund of Luxembourg through the CASCADE Project under
Grant C17/SR/11682050. (Corresponding author: Sonam Futi Sherpa.)
Sonam Futi Sherpa, Manoochehr Shirzaei, and Chandrakanta Ojha are
with the School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State Univer-
sity, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA (e-mail: sfsherpa@asu.edu; shirzaei@asu.edu;
Chandrakanta.Ojha@asu.edu).
Susanna Werth is with the School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona
State University, Tempe, AZ 85287 USA, and also with the School of Geo-
graphical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
85281 USA (e-mail: swerth@asu.edu).
Renaud Hostache is with the Department of Environmental Research and
Innovation, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 4362 Esch-sur-
Alzette, Luxembourg (e-mail: renaud.hostache@list.lu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTARS.2020.2970337
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
environment and often causes loss of human lives [1], [2].
Likely triggered by recent changes in the global climate, the
frequency of severe floods is increasing worldwide [3]–[5]. For
instance, in the USA, the number of extreme precipitation events
[6] and tropical cyclone has increased since 1900 [7]. Chang
et al. [8] report an increase in flood damage for six Korean cities
since 1971, where possible causes of flooding include extreme
summer precipitation and deforestation.
Further, the Xinjiang autonomous region of China has expe-
rienced increased losses from flooding due to excessive rainfall
since 1987. Dottori et al. [9] indicate that future floods will
likely impact different regions unevenly, with the highest losses
expected to occur in Asia. India has experienced some of its
worst floodings in recent years. In June 2013, unprecedented
floods and landslides caused more than 5000 casualties and
widespread property loss in Uttarakhand state in North India
[10]. Dobhal et al. [11] suggested that changing climate causing
continuous melting of snow and glacier in the surrounding
Chorabari Lake and the heavy precipitation on June 16 and
17 led to the outburst of the glacial lake resulting into severe
flooding. In 2015, a massive flood in Chennai in the state of Tamil
Nadu caused damage of nearly US$ 3 billion [12]. Recently, on
May 3, 2019, extremely severe cyclonic storm Fani made a rare
landfall over the southeastern part of India, when entering from
the Bay of Bengal. The resulting flood event led to a devastating
humanitarian crisis, which forced the evacuation of almost 1
million people to temporary shelters in Odisha [13].
Availability of data from earth observation satellites improves
communities’ capacity for timely response to flood events, as
they provide an efficient way of mapping flood extent over a large
area. Various satellite altimetry data are used to estimate runoff
remotely, which is useful for river inundation mapping [14],
[15], and for evaluating the performance of hydrologic models
[14], [16]. Further, Khan et al. [17] showed optical satellite
observations as a cost-effective tool for gathering hydrological
data in the sparsely gauged and ungauged basin around the
world. However, these optical datasets become less useful when
cloud cover becomes substantial over the area.
In contrast, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) datasets exhibit
significant promises due to the broad spatial coverage, fre-
quent repeat intervals and most importantly, the all-weather
day or night image acquisition capabilities [17]. In SAR im-
ages, smooth open water appears as dark areas since most of
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA
the incident radar signal is specularly reflected away from the
antenna [19], resulting in a low backscatter recording, whereas,
nonflooded terrain scatters the signal in many directions and
produces higher backscattered intensity [20]. As a result, the
mapping of water bodies in SAR images is relatively straightfor-
ward. The side-looking geometry of SAR satellites and emerging
objects (e.g., vegetation, trees) can, however, pose a challenge to
the SAR-based flood mapping effort [21]. Speckle noise due to
the interference between the radar return from individual scatter-
ers within a pixel is another issue hampering a straightforward
SAR image interpretation [22]. Moreover, pixels associated with
radar shadow, or smooth surfaces (e.g., highways, tarmacs, flat
roofs, parking lots) may exhibit backscatter intensity similar
to that of inundated areas [23]. SAR based methods of flood
mapping include [23]: simple visual interpretation [18], [24],
[25], image change detection techniques [26]–[31], supervised
classification [32], [33], region growing algorithms [34]–[37],
object-oriented image analysis techniques [28], [38], and his-
togram thresholding and interferometric SAR coherence [39],
[40].
Some flood detection approaches use a combination of the
methods above to map water bodies. For instance, Pulvirenti
et al. [41] used fuzzy logic and a theoretical model of radar
return signal from inundated pixels to mitigate the impact of
vegetation on flood classification. Shen et al. [42] integrate
SAR image classification based on statistics, morphological
processing, multithreshold-based compensation, and machine-
learning correction to propose an unsupervised semi-real-time
flood detection algorithm. Further, Westerhoff et al. [43] offer
an automated flood mapping approach that obtains global maps
of water bodies by evaluating the conditional flood probability
of a pixel given its backscatter value and incidence angle. In
recent works, Giustarini et al. [44] and Matgen et al. [45]
propose a combination of thresholding region growing and
change detection for automatic flood extent detection within a
single SAR image. Chini et al. [46], building on the work of
Matgen et al. [45], develop a hierarchical split-based approach
(HSBA) that searches for tiles of a variable size allowing the
parameterization of the distributions of flooded and nonflooded
pixels. This advancement results in a more robust estimate of
flood extent [47].
Most flood mapping algorithms provide an estimate of flood
extent in the form of a binary map [48]. Despite their use-
fulness, such binary maps do not provide any information on
the uncertainty associated with the pixel class. Given a SAR
image and pertained mapping algorithm, Schumann et al. [49]
recognize two primary sources of uncertainties that include the
parameters used to set up a classification algorithm and the
flood image geocoding. Further, Baldassarre et al. [50] analyze
uncertainty stemming from the available SAR images and the
applied classification procedure and point out that the optimal
parameters of the model depend on the type of satellite image
used to evaluate the model as well as on the particular method
used to derive the flood extent [51]. This work further highlights
the need for a transition from deterministic binary wet/dry
maps to a fuzzy flood extent. Giustarini et al. [44] propose an
SAR-based Bayesian framework to estimate flood probabilities,
897
where the determined status of any given pixel is represented
by a probability value in the continuous range [0, 1]. Their
method is based on the Bayes inference mixture modeling [46]
and begins with assigning a primary probability density function
(often a uniform) to each pixel indicating the prior probability
of a pixel being flooded or nonflooded. The choice of this prior
probability is arbitrary [44], and the chosen value may impact
the final results. However, the sensitivity analysis conducted by
Guistarini et al. [44] shows an acceptable performance in terms
of reliability and that little is gained by attempting to estimate
prior probabilities from validation data when choosing a prior
probability of 0.5 following Westerhoff et al. [43]. But one may
use hydrological models [52] to predict the flood extent within
the study area, which can be considered as an informative prior
distribution.
Next, the method uses the histogram of SAR backscatter
values to estimate the marginal probability density function of
backscattering value for a given pixel. Finally, it evaluates the
Bayes relationship for each pixel to calculate the conditional
flood probability of a pixel. Moreover, such probabilistic flood
maps are handy for operational purposes. For example, Hostache
et al. [53] show that their assimilation into a flood forecasting
system allows substantially improving prediction accuracy.
Therefore, due to the ability to characterize the uncertainty
associated with the each pixel class, compared with traditional
deterministic approach, this article applies the Bayesian frame-
work developed by Giustarini et al. [44] to a set of SAR images
acquired by Sentinel-1 C-band satellites over the Kerala state
of India (see Fig. 1) before, during, and after the flood event
in August 2018. Our method generates a priori distribution
functions of backscattering values for flooded and nonflooded
pixels using ensembles of observed SAR amplitude histogram.
Next, we apply a Bayesian framework to update a priori dis-
tribution functions using observed SAR backscattering values
at individual pixels and obtain the posterior flood probability
distribution of a pixel. We compare the probabilistic flood map
obtained from the SAR-based Bayesian approach against the
flood extent obtained from visual inspection of available optical
data acquired by Sentinel-2, Landsat satellites, and images from
Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS).
II. STUDY AREA AND DATASETS
A. Study Area
Kerala is a state of India located between the Arabian Sea
to the west and the Western Ghats to the east. It receives 90%
of its rainfall during six monsoon months and has an average
annual precipitation of about 3000 mm. In August 2018, the
Kerala state experienced 53% above average rainfall during the
monsoon season, leading to large scale flooding [54]. The Idduki
reservoir in the Idduki district received the highest water inflow
of about 2532 m3 /s on August 15 and touched the full reservoir
level (FRL) of about 732.43 m on August 17. On August 16, a
peak discharge of 8800 m3 /s was recorded at the Neeleshwaram
gauging station, which was likely due to the release of water from
the upstream Idukki reservoir. Furthermore, other dams such as
the Kakki dam near the Pamba river basin in Pathanamthitta
898 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020
Fig. 1. (a) DEM of Kerala obtained from SRTM with inset map of India. In total, 14 districts of Kerala state and river network of the state are labeled in the
figure. (b) Slope map of Kerala. Shown are major dams and reservoirs and G&D sites in the panel. (c) Two SAR paths path 63 with two frames 1 and 2 and path
165 with three frames 1, 2, and 3 for the study area.
district, Malapuzha reservoir in Palakkad district, and Idamala-
yar reservoir in Ernakulam district experienced high inflow and
increase in water level that leads to spill over during this intense
rainfall [55].
In summary, the combination of several factors worsened
the flooding in Kerala. These factors included above-average
seasonal rainfall before August 8, persistent excessive rain from
August 8, and already high reservoir storages before the flood
event [54]. The flood affected all the aspects of human lives,
including socioeconomic conditions, transportation, infrastruc-
ture, agriculture, and livelihood, with damages amounting to
more than US$ 3.8 billion [56].
Fig. 1 shows Kerala’s digital elevation model (DEM), its slope
map, and its 14 administrative districts, as well as the location
of its reservoirs and gauging/discharge (G&D) sites. The state
divides into three geographic regions, eastern highlands (rugged
and cool mountainous terrain), the central midlands (rolling
hills), and western lowlands (coastal plains). The region has
a maximum elevation of about 2630 m a.s.l. and the slope of
the area ranges from 0° to 15°. The state has a long flood
history. In 1924, unprecedented flooding overwhelmed the river
networks of Kerala, causing losses of life, property, and crop.
The primary driver of flood event was the rainstorm of July
16–18, 1924, associated with the Southwest monsoon. In 1961,
intense precipitation led to severe flooding and inundation of the
entire state of Kerala, damaging more than 50 000 houses and
115 000 acres of paddy [55].
B. Datasets
1) SAR Data: We use a large set of SAR images acquired by
C-band Sentinel-1A and B satellites with Terrain Observation
with Progressive Scans acquisition mode and revisit time of six
days before and during the flood event to map and compare the
flood extent. Images during floods are from descending paths
63 and 165 having incidence and heading angles of 34° and
–168°, respectively, and are acquired on the dates of August 2,
August 14, August 26, September 7 and August 9, August 21,
August 27 and September 2 (see the Appendix). A flood-free
reference amplitude image is also generated using a set of
SAR images acquired before the flood event [27], [57]. The
preflood SAR dataset includes 23 SAR images acquired in path
63 between July 14, 2017, and July 21, 2018, and 31 images
collected in path 165 during July 21, 2017, and July 28, 2018. For
radar data processing, comprising single look complex (SLC)
generation, radiometric calibration, and coregistration, we use
Gamma processing software [58], [59]. We use the L1 data
format, including SLC products, orbits, and calibration XML
files. Each path includes two partially overlapping frames, and
each frame comprises three subswaths. After calibrating SLC
images, we concatenate the overlapping frames within each path
and then select a portion of the concatenated SLC that covers the
entire study area. The radiometric calibration accounts for the
effect of spatially variable incidence angle on the SAR amplitude
and yields pixels whose scattering properties reflect the physical
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA 899

Fig. 2. SAR log-transformed intensity images acquired on (a) path 63 for dates August 2, August 14, August 26, and September 7, as well as (b) path 165 for dates
August 9, August 21, August 27, and September 2. Also, the flood-free reference log-transformed intensity images generated by stacking preflood acquisitions of
both paths are provided. Pixels of darker grayscale (< –5 dB) are associated with water bodies.

TABLE I
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRECIPITATION DATA PRODUCT

properties of the illuminated surface. To reduce the speckle
effects in SLC products, we applied a multilook factor of 30 and
5 in range and azimuth direction and yielded a pixel resolution
of ∼70 m × ∼70 m. Further, we precisely coregister SAR
images acquired in each path to their respected master image
[60] using the satellite ephemeris data and a reference Shuttle
Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) DEM at 30-m resolution
[61]. Finally, the median values of the returned signal amplitude
at the location of precisely collocated pixels are used to calculate
a flood-free amplitude image (see Fig. 2).
2) Precipitation Data: Precipitation data from the TRMM
Multisatellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA), combining mul-
tiple satellite-based precipitation measurement missions from
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),
were acquired to understand the precipitation pattern during
the period August 1–September 7, 2018. We use the daily
accumulated precipitation generated from the global research-
quality three-hourly TMPA 3B42 product (see Table I). Here,
we use the variable precipitation (HQprecipitation) (see Table I),
which provides full coverage within the 50° latitude bands as it
900 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

Fig. 3. Aggregated precipitation for each district of Kerala and cumulative over each district. Bars show the aggregated precipitation between two consecutive
SAR acquisitions (source: https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/TRMM_3B42_Daily_7/summary).

merges the combined microwave-infrared estimates with gauge
calibration over land. Specifics of this dataset can be found
in [62].
Fig. 3 shows the time series of cumulative precipitation for
each district of Kerala, spanning the period August 1–September
7. Also, bars indicate the aggregated precipitation between dates
of SAR acquisitions. The cumulative precipitation is the high-
est in three northernmost districts of Kerala, reaching almost
800 mm from August 1 to September 7, 2018. The districts
of Thiruvananthapuram, Idduki, and Pathanamthitta have the
lowest cumulative precipitation, with values lower than 400 mm.
Comparing the single-day precipitations, the districts of Kasar-
god, Kannur, and Kozhikode received, on August 14, peak values
of 401, 315, and 244 mm, respectively, whereas the districts of
Thrissur, Ernakulam, and Alapuzha received peak precipitation
of 310, 309, and 315 mm, respectively, on August 21. Fig. 4
shows the cumulative precipitation between the dates of SAR
acquisitions aggregated over Kerala’s districts. Note that the
color range is different for each panel due to significant temporal
variations in the amount of precipitation.
3) Optical Data: To compare and discuss the probabilistic
flood map generated from SAR, we processed optical datasets
for corresponding flood dates and before the flood. On February
6, 2018, the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satel-
lite (30-m resolution) acquired preflood images (bands 6-5-3).
On July 3, August 7, August 12, August 22, and August 27,
the multispectral instrument on the European Space Agency’s
Sentinel-2 satellite acquired flood and postflood images (band
11-8-3). Details of the data acquisition dates are provided in
Table II.
These datasets are discussed in Section V-A. To further val-
idate the flood maps obtained from Sentinel-1A/B SAR acqui-
sitions, for the same dates, we collect the three-day composite
flood extent data provided by the NASA near-real-time (NRT)
MODIS Global Flood Mapping initiative (https://floodmap.
modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov). We also acquire the daily cloud re-
trieval fraction data calculated from the 1-km resolution MOD06
product oversampled at 5-km spaced pixels1 . The details of the
MODIS NRT flood maps are presented in Table III, and the
attribute of the MOD06 product is given in Table IV.
1 [Online] Available: https://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/dataprod/mod06.php.
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA 901

Fig. 4. Spatial distribution of precipitation aggregated between two consecutive SAR acquisitions and accumulated over each district. Note: Precipitation color
bars of each panel have different scales and are not similar (source: https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/TRMM_3B42_Daily_7/summary).

TABLE II
ACQUISITION DATES AND TIMES OF SENTINEL-2 SAR IMAGES AND LANDSAT 8

The name formatting for Sentinel-2 product and Landsat 8 is YYYYMMDDThhmmss and YYYYMMDD, respectively.

III. METHOD follows [44]:

A. Flood Extent Mapping p (σ ◦ /F ) p (F )
p (F/σ ◦ ) = (1)
p (σ ◦ )
To map the flood extent, we use a statistical approach that        
implements the Bayes theorem. Given the log-transformed p σ 0 = p σ 0 /F p (F ) + p σ 0 /F̄ p F̄ (2)
backscattering intensity (σ ◦ ) of a pixel, the conditional prob- ◦
where p(σ /F ) is the probability of recording a given backscat-
ability of a pixel being flooded, p(F/σ ◦ ), is estimated as ter value σ o for a water pixel (F ), and p(σ 0 /F̄ ) is the probability
902 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

TABLE III
ACQUISITION DATES FOR NASA NRT GLOBAL FLOOD MAPPING INITIATIVE THREE-DAY COMPOSITE MODIS FLOOD EXTENT

The name formatting is YYYYDDD. The tile name formatting is LONGLATI, where LONG and LATI are the longitude and latitude of upper left corner of 10° produce
tile. The composite name formatting is XDYOT, where X indicates the imagery number of days for the product window, Y represents the number of observations required
over the window, for a pixel to be labeled water and T indicates terrain shadow masking, for example, 2D2OT represents 2 days imagery, 2 observations required, and
terrain shadow masking applied.

TABLE IV
ACQUISITION DATES AND TIMES FOR MODIS/TERRA CLOUDS 5-MIN L2 SWATH 5 KM, LEVEL-2 PRODUCT-A

The name formatting is YYYYDDD.hhmm.

of recording a given backscatter value σ ◦ for a nonwater pixel
(F̄ ). The backscatter probability distribution functions (PDFs)
of water and nonwater pixels are assumed to be Gaussian [63],
[64]. Also, p(σ 0 ) is the marginal probability of recording a given
backscatter value σ ◦ for any pixel. The terms p(F ) and p(F̄ ) are
the prior probabilities of a pixel being flooded and nonflooded,
respectively. In a Bayesian framework, p(F ) represents the prior
probability of a pixel being flooded, prior to the backscatter
intensity being measured, and p(F̄ ) = 1 − p(F ). Following
Westerhoff et al. [43], the noninformative prior is chosen as
p(F ) = p(F̄ ) = 0.5, namely the chance of a pixel being flooded
is same as being nonflooded. Giustarini et al. [44] show that
the posterior probability distribution of flooded pixels depends
weakly on the choice of prior values. However, one may use
hydrological models [52] to predict the flood extent within the
study area, which can be considered as an informative prior
distribution.
To estimate p(σ ◦ /F ) and p(σ 0 /F̄ ), two PDFs are needed
to represent the intensity of flooded pixels and that of the
background. To this end, we apply the HSBA proposed by Chini
et al. [46]. This approach uses a quadtree decomposition and
searches for tiles of variable size, enabling the parameterization
of the water and nonwater backscatter PDFs. In other words, this
method searches for an ensemble of image subtitles of variable
size, called bimodal mask hereafter, exhibiting a bimodally
distributed histogram.
To set up the HSBA, we consider the backscattering value
of the water pixels to be less than –15 dB. Next, we begin
with splitting the SAR image into blocks using the so-called
quadtree algorithm, with the smallest tile size being 1000 ×
1000 pixels. In each tile, the distribution of the water pixels
(i.e., pixels with value < –15 dB) is compared with that of the
remaining pixels. Since the goal is to identify tiles with a precise
bimodal distribution, we employ Ashman’s D statistic [46] with
a coefficient of 2.6. This statistic compares the mean of the
two distributions with respect to their variances and indicates
if their difference is statistically significant. Once the tiles with
precise bimodal distribution are identified across the image, their
pixels’ values are combined to generate final distributions. Fig. 5
shows the intensity histogram for all pixels located within the
bimodal mask (black curve), the parameterized Gaussian curves
(rescaled Gaussian PDFs) of the water (blue curve) and no water
(red curve) pixels, as well as the best fitting bimodal curve to
all (green curve) pixels located within the bimodal mask. Here,
water and no-water are used interchangeably with flooded and
nonflooded, respectively, from now onwards except for preflood
conditions.
A visual inspection suggests a good agreement between the
observed histograms and the fitted Gaussian distributions. Also,
the bimodal distribution of intensity histogram indicates that
the HSBA successfully identified flooded and nonflooded pixels.
For some dates, such as August 9, there is some overlap between
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA
Fig. 5. Flooded and nonflooded pixels histograms. The yellow and magenta curves are, respectively, the best fitting Gaussian distributions to flooded (F),
nonflooded (F̄ ) pixels log-transformed intensity histogram for (a) path 63 and (b) path 165. The log-transformed intensity histograms are shown in black, and the
cyan curve is the best fitting bimodal Gaussian distribution to these histograms.
the two histograms. For the pixels whose intensity values fall
within the overlap zone of the histograms, the conditional flood
probability obtained from (1) may remain unchanged compared
with the a priori one.
IV. RESULTS
Fig. 6 shows the results of probabilistic flood mapping for the
SAR images acquired in path 63 on August 2, August 14, August
26, and September 7, as well as path 165 on August 9, August
21, August 27, and September 2. A value close to 1 represents
a high probability of a pixel being water and therefore flooded.
The bottom row provides the conditional flood probability of
a pixel before the flood period, where the probability of ∼1
(i.e., the conditional probability of a pixel being flooded/water)
marks existing water bodies and permanent rivers such as the
Vembanad Lake. The pixels with an estimated probability of near
0 are likely not flooded or no water and are distant from water
networks and reservoirs. Within the northern part of Kerala cov-
ered by the path 63, clusters of pixels with significant conditional
flood probability mark traces of river networks such as Murat,
Kuttyadi, and Beypor as well as the Chaliyar river network.
Concerning southern Kerala covered by path 165, pixels with
significant conditional flood probability mark the Vembanad
and Periyar lakes and around river networks (see Fig. 6). Note
that we did not show pixels with probability < 0.1 for only
visual purposes (in Fig. 6 only) but for all other calculations
903
the pixel with a conditional flood probability larger than 0.99 is
considered.
Note that in Fig. 6, we observe no flooded/water pixels
around some of the river networks (blue curves) determined
HydroSHEDS database. This is because these rivers are only
possible flow paths that are determined based on the 3 arcsec
SRTM DEM [65], some of which may never experience flow
or are too narrow to be mapped by our SAR dataset. Moreover,
some of these rivers may only be a depression in DEM, which
are labeled as a river in the global datasets. Therefore, although
the HydroSHEDS dataset provides useful information regarding
the river networks at a global scale, the individual channels and
rivers may not represent actual inland endorheic basins. That is
why, some of the blue curves are not identified as water pixels
in Fig. 6.
Fig. 7(b) and (c) zooms and focuses on three of the preflood
and after flood zones of probabilistic maps for the paths 63 and
165. These three zones are highlighted in Fig. 7(a) with square
boxes. The zoomed preflood maps [see Fig. 7(b) and (c)] show
perennial water bodies identified by pixels with a water probabil-
ity of ∼1 (all flood). Zone 1 in northern Kerala is characterized
by a significant increase in the flooded areas. Zone 2 in southern
Kerala similarly shows an increase in the number of pixels with
a probability of ∼1, however, on August 9, the majority of the
pixels are characterized by a probability of ∼0.5, which indicates
that the conditional flood probability of a pixel remains similar to
that of the initial value. On this date, the intensity histograms for
904 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

Fig. 6. Conditional flood probabilities at the time of Sentinel-1A/B SAR acquisitions for (a) path 63 and (b) path 165. Pixels with probability < 0.1 are not
shown. The bottom row shows flood probabilities for preflood images, whereas pixels with high flood probability mark the existing water bodies. A purple polygon
outlines Kerala’s state. River networks obtained from Hydrological data and maps based on Shuttle Elevation Derivatives at multiple Scales (HydroSHEDS) are
marked in blue (source: https://hydrosheds.org/). Note that these rivers are possible flow paths that are determined based on the 3 arcsec SRTM3 DEM and some
of them may never experience flow or are too narrow to be mapped by our SAR dataset. Moreover, some of these rivers may only be a depression in DEM, which
are labeled as a river in the global datasets.

flooded and nonflooded pixels overlap between –15 and –25 dB
(see Fig. 5).
Zone 3 locates south of Vembanad Lake, whose wetland
system is the largest in India. The flood maps show a significant
increase in the inundated area compared with the preflood map,
which lasts at least from August 9 to September 2. Although the
negative impact of sea-level rise and permanent coastal flooding
on wetlands is well known [66], the wetland plants response to
periodic soil saturation resulting into flood such as that of the
Kerala flood is somewhat unclear [67], which mainly depends on
several factors such as vegetation type, inundation duration, and
wetland elevation. In particular, soil saturation due to flooding
can cause soil anoxia, which can be harmful to a wetland’s
ecosystem [68].
To calculate the flooded area and its percentage on each
district of Kerala, we combine the flood maps obtained from
both paths (see Fig. 8). Given that the acquisition dates for
the northern and southern paths are different, we combine the
acquisitions in path 63 with the one of nearest date in path
165 and discard the duplicate pixels to obtain flood area and
percentage for an interval whose beginning and end are marked
with either path acquisitions. Next, we consider pixels with the
conditional probability of a pixel being flooded greater than
0.99 and calculate the flood area per pixel as the probability
times the area of the pixel (∼70 m × ∼70 m). We find that
from August 2 to September 7, the distribution of flood area
percentage per district remains mostly steady. The most sig-
nificant flood area percentages of 12% and 6% are obtained
for the districts of Alappuzha and Kottayam, respectively, from
August 14 to August 21. For this period, a total area of 523 km2
is flooded within the state of Kerala. In terms of the flooded
area, the districts of Alappuzha and Kottayam experienced the
most extensive flood covering an area of 168 and 122 km2 ,
respectively.
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA 905

Fig. 7. Close-up map of flood probability at selected sites in Kerala, whose locations are shown in panel (a). (b) Flood map for the zone 1 in north Kerala covered
by path 63 on August 2, August 14, August 26, and September 7. (c) Flood maps for zones 2 and 3 in south Kerala covered by path 165 on August 9, August 21,
August 27, and September 2. The bottom row on both panels (b) and (c) shows flood probabilities for preflood images, where pixels with high flood probability
mark the existing water bodies.

V. DISCUSSION Next, we compare the flood map from the SAR-based

A. Flood Extent: SAR Versus Landsat and Sentinel-2
Optical Datasets
Fig. 9 shows the optical images of the southern part of
Kerala before, during, and after the flood event. The images are
false-color, where dark blue represents flood water, and bright
green is vegetation. Fig. 9(a), which exhibits the least cloud
cover, shows the existing water bodies such as the Vembanad
lake. Despite our effort to identify images with minimal cloud
coverage, the prevalence of clouds tempers with our ability to
assess the flood extent on most dates. In general, the presence of
clouds and cloud shadows significantly impacts the usefulness
of spectral bands of the optical sensor for flood extent mapping
[69], [70]. A comparison of the images with the least cloud cover
[see Fig. 9(a) and (e)] shows, however, a drastic increase in the
flood extent area. This provides the first-order validation for the
flood map obtained through our SAR-based Bayesian approach
(see Fig. 10).
Bayesian approach for August 21 with that obtained from the
optical image for August 22 to further investigate the ability of
our approach for identifying water/flood (see Fig. 10). We chose
August 22 because this date was the only one with minimal
cloud cover over the study area, providing useful optical data.
To generate the binary flood map from the optical image, we ap-
ply adaptive histogram thresholding using Otsu method imple-
mented in MATLAB through function “otsuthresh.” Fig. 10(b)
shows the optical flood map, where the primary water body of
the Vembanad lake is identified in agreement with that of the
SAR-based flood map in Fig. 10(a). Although clouds in the
optical image are falsely flagged as flooded areas, we further
focus on six zones [blue boxes in Fig. 10(a)] to perform a detailed
comparison between the SAR-based probabilistic flood map and
optical flood map.
This comparison indicates the overall success of the SAR-
based approach for detecting river networks and small wa-
ter/flood, for example, in zones 1, 2, 3, and 5 in Fig. 10(a).
906 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

Fig. 8. (a) Percentage of the flooded area. (b) Total flood area concerning the preflood conditions for each district. Each interval is marked with the date of SAR
acquisition in path 63 and the nearest one in path 165. Districts with the highest flooded values are labeled.

However, it misses zone 4, where optical image indicates a
water body, whereas the SAR-based approach places near-zero
flood probabilities. Noteworthy that the optical-image-based
flood map does not depict river networks and small impound-
ments visible in zones 1, 2, 3, and 5 of the probabilistic ap-
proach. Also, in optical image clouds are mistaken for wa-
ter bodies as underlined in zone 6, whereas the SAR-based
map inherently is independent of weather conditions and cloud
cover.
Moreover, on all other dates, optical data are not suitable for
detecting water bodies because of the presence of the cloud.
In such a case, SAR image sensors have the advantage of being
able to acquire useful data regardless of weather conditions [18],
[44]. Therefore, flood maps created from SAR images present
a coherent source of flooding information and holds significant
value for operational purposes.
Furthermore, the probabilistic flood map from the SAR-based
Bayesian approach was able to characterize the uncertainty
associated with each pixel class. Noteworthy, for SAR-based
flood mapping surface, vegetation can be a significant source
of uncertainty and may cause a mixed volume/surface scat-
tering depending on the radar wavelength, which reduces the
accuracy of the probability density function associated with
nonflooded pixels [44]. Moreover, other nuisance, such as wind-
induced roughening or speckle noise, can reduce the accuracy
of quadtree classification [44]. However, the strength of the
returned signal from a vegetated surface and other landform
remains significantly larger than that of the water body. Note
that our Bayesian framework requires only a bimodal distribu-
tion of pixels backscattering properties, namely flooded versus
nonflooded pixels. As long as the distribution of flooded pixels
is well constrained, the remaining pixels (land, rock, vegetation)
can be considered as nonflooded. Nevertheless, the water body
underneath dense vegetation may not be identified using C-band
observations, which is a limitation of the dataset used but not
the method.
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA 907

Fig. 9. Optical images of Kerala recorded during the year 2018 (see also Table III). (a) Landsat 8 (bands 6-5-3), and (b)–(f) other images are from Sentinel-2
satellite (bands 11-8-3). Dark blue areas indicate flooded water and green represents areas covered by vegetation.

B. Flood Extent: SAR Versus MODIS Optical Datasets
Fig. 11 shows NASA NRT MFD and cloud fraction in percent-
age for the flood dates, August 2, 9, 14, 21, 26, 27, and September
2 and 7, respectively. These dates were selected to be consistent
with those of Sentinel-1A/B acquisitions, to allow for additional
validation and comparison with our probabilistic flood maps.
The presence of complete cloud cover on the images of August
9, 14, and 27 make it difficult to detect any flooded areas for these
periods through the NRT MODIS flood maps. Few floodwaters
are seen on August 21, August 26 and September 2 because of
the cloud cover. The dates of August 2 and September 7 have
the lowest cloud covers of 0-5%, which allows MODIS data to
detect many flooded areas in the region. On these two dates,
most of the floodwater is detected near the Vembanad lake in
Kottayam and Alappuzha districts [see Fig. 11(a) and (h)]. As
such, the NRT MODIS flood maps provide further validation
for our results obtained through the probabilistic flood map
based on SAR images. Such MODIS flood detection provides
consistent and independently verifiable information [71] and is
one of the significant resources for validation of flood map from
our Bayesian SAR-based framework.
In contrast to flood maps produced using SAR datasets, the
NRT MODIS flood maps ideally can identify daily changes in
the flooded areas. However, the presence of clouds during acqui-
sition reduces the detection capability of the MODIS sensor, as is
evident in Fig. 11(b)–(g). This highlights the advantage of flood
mapping using SAR acquisitions over that of MODIS as well
as other optical satellite images, whose interpretation becomes
challenging due to cloud coverage. Despite cloud removal al-
gorithms developed for MODIS datasets [72]–[74], SAR-based
approaches show significant promises thanks to the increased
908 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

Fig. 10. Comparison of probabilistic SAR-based flood map for (a) August 21 and optical flood map for (b) August 22, focusing on the flood pattern near Vembanad
lake. Six zones (blue boxes) from 1 to 6 are selected for comparison between these two maps.

Fig. 11. NASA NRT Global Flood Mapping initiative MFD of three-day composite (source: floodmap.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov) for the flood dates of Sentinel-
1A/B acquisitions. Red color indicates flooded pixels. The background is the MODIS cloud fraction data (in percentage) for the respective flood dates (source:
earthdata.nasa.gov). Zero value indicates no clouds, whereas 100 means the entire pixel is covered by clouds.
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA
frequency of acquisition provided by various space-borne and
airborne SAR missions. In addition to this, the SAR-based
Bayesian approach provides more information on uncertainty
associated with each pixel than optical flood maps such as NRT
MODIS alone.
C. Flooding and Precipitation Pattern
We find no apparent correlation between the spatial distribu-
tion of aggregated precipitation (see Fig. 4) and the flooded area
percentage (see Fig. 8). Instead, most flooding occurred near the
lake Vembanad in the Alappuzha and Kottayam districts, despite
relatively lower precipitation in those areas. For instance, the
aggregated precipitation values for Alappuzha from August 9 to
August 13 and August 14 to August 20 were 59 and 103 mm,
respectively, whereas those of Kottayam were 55 and 96 mm,
respectively.
On the other hand, from August 9 to August 13 and from
August 14 to August 20, the highest precipitation values of
89 and 231 mm occurred in the districts of Ernakulam and
Pathanamthitta, respectively (see Fig. 4). The fact that there is
no spatial correlation between local flood extents and rainfall
is expected for two reasons: First, there is potentially some
delay between the rainfall event and the flooding, especially for
rather large catchments: flood wave need some time to reach the
floodplains from mountainous areas or hills. Second, rainfall is
potentially concentrated at the overhead catchments (hills and
mountains) whereas floods occur more at the downstream in the
floodplain. As a consequence, the flood extent is not necessarily
observed close to the place where precipitation was abundant.
Further, the absence of spatial correlation may be related to
the fact that the significant dam reservoirs [see Fig. 1(b)] were al-
ready full due to earlier rainfall throughout 2018, and the August
precipitation led the dam to overtop [75]. Overtopping a dam is
often a precursor to its failure, and thus excess water may be
released through spillways to avoid the failure. During August,
more than 35 dams opened their spillways to release the flood
runoff. Specifically, the Idduki dam of Idduki district opened
its spillways gates for the first time in 26 years after the storm
of August 15–17 (Central Water Commission, Government of
India Study Report, 2018). The release of excess water from
dams can overwhelm the downstream channel networks and
likely contribute to the flooding observed in Alappuzha and
Kottayam districts (see Figs. 6 and 8). Dams are often built
to provide flood protection to downstream land and population
through the provision of storage and controlled discharge of
flood inflows [76]. The operating schedule determines the inflow
and outflow to and from a dam, which is used by managers to find
a balance between flood control, irrigation, power generation,
and conversation [77]. However, dams also introduce a new
component to the flood risk due to the possibility of dam failure
and overtopping [78], [79]. Mishra et al. [54] argue that the
high reservoir storage before the extreme precipitation in August
2018 likely worsened the flooding in Kerala. The roles of dams
in causing flooding in the Periyar Basin of Kerala state of India
are discussed in [72].
Though the effects of sediments are not much discussed. In
India, erosion, and reservoir sedimentation had become a costly
909
and ever-growing problem for managers as it reduces the lifetime
of the dam or increases the demand for maintenance [80]. Under
some conditions, up to half of a reservoir’s volume can be filled
up with sediments [81], which significantly reduces the reservoir
capacity over time. Thus, the operating schedules need to be
revised frequently, which is time-consuming and expensive.
Also, intense precipitation and storms cause an increased rate
of sediment deposition [82]. Interruption of sediment transport
flow by dams or removal of sediment from the channel by gravel
mining may lead to a condition where flow downstream of a dam
becomes sediment starved, which accelerates channel incision
and induces channel instability [83]. This process might have
worsened the flood severity during August 2018 in the state of
Kerala.
To reduce dam flooding, we suggest to frequently update
the operating schedules to incorporate the effect of extreme
climate changes such as intense precipitation, to account for
variable carrying capacities of downstream channels as well as
to examine a wide range of extreme rainfall forecasts [84]. We
further suggest restoring the continuity of sediment transport
and finding alternatives to rivers for reducing sediment delivery
from mining activities, in response to the increased risk of river
and reservoir sedimentation [83].
VI. CONCLUSION
We applied a Bayesian framework to generate probabilistic
maps of the August 2018 flood in Kerala, India, using SAR
images acquired by Sentinel-1A/B satellites. The method uses
an HSBA for classifying the SAR image into two classes of
flooded and background pixels. The probability density function
associated with each class is then used to compute, for each
pixel its probability to correspond to water, given the recorded
backscatter. The obtained probabilistic flood maps indicate that
overall flooding occurred after August 8 and culminated on
August 14 and August 21. Also, extensive flooding occurred
alongside river networks and adjacent to lakes with two districts
of Alappuzha and Kottayam experiencing most flooding. We
observe no correlation between the spatial distributions of the
flooded areas and the rainfall amounts at the district level of
our study area. Instead, higher flooded areas are observed in
the southern districts such as Alappuzha and Kottayam located
downstream floodplain of one of the major dams of the state,
Idduki dam. Two major reasons for observation of no apparent
correlation might be due to, first, there is often some delay
between the rainfall event and the flooding especially for rather
large catchments where flood waves need some time to reach
floodplains from higher elevations. Second, rainfall is more
abundant at overhead catchments (hills and mountains) whereas
flood inundation occurs further downstream in the floodplains.
We suggest that the flood severity in these states is exacerbated
by the release of water from the upstream reservoirs, such as the
Idduki dam, which were already full due to precipitation during
2018. We show that in contrast to flood maps obtained from
optical images MODIS datasets, our SAR-based probabilistic
flood extents are not affected by cloud cover. Thus, this approach
can be used in semi-real time for mapping floodwater and
associated damage, where the surface is not visible from space
due to the weather condition and the nighttime.
910 IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATIONS AND REMOTE SENSING, VOL. 13, 2020

APPENDIX 165 used for estimating probabilistic flood maps. Dates and
Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) of the data are provided
Acquisition dates and hours of Sentinel-1A/B, C-band SAR
images acquired in descending orbit geometry of paths 63 and in YYYYMMDDThhmmss format.
SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank R. Pelich, M. Chini,
and P. Matgen. Sentinel-1A/B data are available at https://
vertex.daac.asf.alaska.edu/. Daily TRMP precipitation data are
available at https://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/datasets/TRMM_3B42_
Daily_7/summary.
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SHERPA et al.: PROBABILISTIC MAPPING OF AUGUST 2018 FLOOD OF KERALA, INDIA
Sonam Futi Sherpa received the undergraduate de-
gree in environmental sciences and M.S. by research
degree in glaciology from Kathmandu University,
Dhulikhel, Nepal, in 2015, and the M.S. in science de-
gree from the School of Sustainability, Arizona State
University (ASU), Tempe, AZ, USA, in 2018, where
she is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree with
the School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE),
in the earth sciences program.
She is also a Graduate Research Associate with
the SESE, ASU, USA, in the earth sciences program.
She worked on climate, cryosphere, and hydrology of the high mountain Asia
using in situ and space-based techniques before joining ASU. Her current
research focuses on water budget changes, flooding, and probabilistic flood
mapping using synthetic aperture radar and other remote sensing techniques and
understanding of glacier mass changes in the Hindu-Kush Himalaya region using
gravimetry technique. Her research interests include geodesy and hydro-geodesy
and application of space-based technologies to geophysical and geosciences
problems.
Manoochehr Shirzaei received the M.Sc. degree in
surveying engineering (geodesy) from Tehran Uni-
versity, Tehran, Iran, in 2003 and the Ph.D. degree in
geophysics and remote sensing from the University
of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany, in 2010.
From 2007 to 2011, he was a Researcher with
the German Research Center for Geosciences, Pots-
dam, Germany, where he developed several advanced
multitemporal InSAR algorithm and heuristic opti-
mization methods with application in volcano rapid
response systems. In 2011, he joined the University
of California–Berkeley as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar to work on aseismic
and seismic faulting processes along the Hayward Fault. In 2013, he joined
the School of Earth and Space Exploration, Arizona State University, Tempe,
AZ, USA, as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Radar Remote Sensing
And Tectonic Geodesy Lab, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His
research interests include radar remote sensing, signal processing, inverse theory,
groundwater hydrogeodesy, tectonics, volcanism, and induced seismicity.
Chandrakanta Ojha received the M.Sc. degree in
physics from the University of Delhi, New Delhi,
India, in 2008, the M.Tech. degree in natural resources
engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology
Bombay, Mumbai, India, in 2011, and the Ph.D.
degree in civil and environmental engineering from
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, in 2015.
From 2012 to 2016, he was a Research Fellow
with the Istituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico
dell’Ambiente, a Research Institute of the Italian Na-
tional Research Council, Naples, Italy. Since 2016,
he has been a Researcher with Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. His
research interests include synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data processing, devel-
opment of advanced multitemporal differential SAR interferometry techniques,
parallel computing, and groundwater modeling.
913
Susanna Werth received the M.Sc. degree in geodesy
(eng.) from the Technical University of Dresden,
Dresden, Germany, in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in
hydrology from the University of Potsdam, Potsdam,
Germany, in 2010.
From 2006 to 2010, she worked on the development
of approaches to integrate observations from satellite
gravimetry into global hydrological modeling as a
Researcher with the Hydrology Section of the Ger-
man Research Center for Geosciences, Potsdam, Ger-
many. Between 2010 and 2012, she was Postdoctoral
Fellow and Coordinator of a research project on sediment transport modeling in
semiarid environments with the Institute of Geosciences, University of Potsdam.
During 2013 and 2014, she was a freelance consultant in Arizona, and in 2015,
she was a Postdoc with Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, to research
groundwater resources in the African Sahel zone by analyzing observations
of satellite gravimetry. Since 2016, she has been holding a joint appointment
as Research Faculty with the School of Earth and Space Exploration and the
School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University.
Her research interests include interactions of the water cycle with geophysical
processes associated with the gravity field and with the deformation of the solid
earth, the development of analysis techniques for geodetic remote sensing data
to support their application for monitoring and predicting the availability water
resources, and the response of the components of the terrestrial water cycle and
water resources to changes in earth’s climate system.
Renaud Hostache received the M.Sc. degree in me-
chanics of geophysical media and environment from
Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble, France, in 2003,
the M.Eng. degree in hydraulics and environmental
sciences from the Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble,
Grenoble, France, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree
in water sciences from AgroParisTech, Montpellier,
France, in 2006.
Since 2007, he has been a Researcher with
Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology
(formerly Centre de Recherche Public Gabriel Lipp-
mann), Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg. His research interests include the re-
trieval of hydrological information from satellite earth observation and its
assimilation into flood and drought numerical models for improving forecasts
and reducing prediction uncertainty.