India: researchers to predict flood damage using satellite data

As India recovers from the devastating effects of cyclones Amphan and Nisarga, world-renowned water researchers, HR Wallingford, will develop a method to predict damage from future flooding. Working for the Met Office Weather and Climate Science for Service Partnership (WCSSP) India project and supported by the UK Government’s Newton Fund, specialists will use Earth Observation (EO) data from satellites to assess the likely impacts of flooding on buildings and farmland across the country. The results of the project are expected to inform the way similar challenges are tackled around the world. Initially, the work will focus on three areas in Kerala, Southern India, which experienced devastating flooding during the monsoon rains in both 2018 and 2019. The 2018 Keralan floods led to hundreds of deaths, huge landslides, and temporarily displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The financial and livelihood costs were immense, with the Financial Times reporting an estimated US$2.7bn worth of damages to homes, roads and huge tracts of farmland. www.hrwallingford.com