Assessment Of The 2022 Flood Disaster In Pakistan’s Lower Indus Plain Using Sar And Optical Remote Sensing

The Indus floodplain, known for its fertile soil and traditional crop production, has been heavily affected by floods in 2022. In previous flood disaster management studies of this region, there has been a lack of focus on using remote sensing to assess the time evolution of flood water depths. This research addresses the gap using multi-temporal Sentinel-1A, 2A and ground-based validation survey methods. This has enabled the study of the spatial and temporal variations in flood water depth and agricultural damage for the 2022 flood events in Pakistan’s 21 worst-affected districts. In this work, a Google Earth Engine (GEE) based flood depth estimation model has been used. Moreover, we have used the In-SAR technique to measure changes in flood water levels and evaluated its accuracy in changed environmental situations. The results indicates that a total of 26,252 km
²
area was affected by the flood, where water depths reached a maximum of 7 m in the northern and western parts of the lower Indus basin. A total of 1,307,102.8 ha of agricultural land was submerged in flood water. The In-SAR approach achieved a spatial flood depth accuracy of 88%, as compared to the GEE-based Floodwater Depth Estimation Tool.