Improving the extraction of crisis information in the context of flood, landslide, and fire rapid mapping using SAR and optical remote sensing data

Rapid Mapping is a mature Earth Observation (EO) service with many years of user oriented development since the International Charter ‘Space and Major Disaster’ was established in 1999. This activity of providing EO satellite data derived disaster mapping during emergencies to civil protection and humanitarian user communities occurs at national, continental and worldwide scales. In an ESA R&D project the DLR and ICube-SERTIT are collaborating on enhancing automation of disaster mapping chains within increasingly fast production and monitoring cycles and Big Data handling considerations. The work uses optical and radar data from French, German, ESA Sentinel, and Copernicus Emergency Management Service rapid mapping activation sources. In this paper selected preliminary results are presented with SERTIT concentrating on CNES backed ORFEO Toolbox developments and the DLR notably presenting its Sentinel-1 automatic flood mapping chain. Finally, perspectives are given for this on-going initiative with their pertinence to the field of rapid mapping.