SAR image analysis techniques for flood area mapping - literature survey

Flood area mapping is an integral part of disaster management operation which gets value when the details about inundated region has been made available in real time mode as well as when the much required temporal information is shared to the disaster mitigation authorities at right time. The challenges of such real time flood area mapping operations can be met by spaceborn Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technology which is capable of capturing the critical information of large and hard-to-reach territories during all weather and all time situations. Mapping the flood related information of SAR images require much attention as the pixels associated with the inundated regions exhibit similar reflectance with major part of the pixels associated with high altitude region, shadow, runway and broad road networks. Such challenges have been addressed by worldwide researchers with the help of image processing functions. Many such SAR image based flood area mapping models take the advantages of various image classification approaches as well as in integrating multiple image processing functions mainly to differentiate the inundated pixels from other pixels which exhibits similar reflectance by which the mapping accuracy is enhanced. This paper is dedicated, in understanding and documenting various such significant SAR image based flood area mapping models by highlighting its strengths. Significant SAR image bases flood area mapping models from 1990's to 2015 has been discussed. The respective references can be used by young researchers who are interested and willing to work in SAR image based flood area mapping techniques.