Climate change and the associated heavy rainfall events are increasing the risk of flooding in urban areas. In view of these challenges, effective and sustainable natural hazard management is essential. The HoSMoS project (Flood Protection Monitoring via Satellites) investigates innovative approaches to monitor and further develop existing flood protection systems using satellite-based technologies.
Since the 2002 floods, the focus of flood management in Austria has shifted from purely technical protection measures to integrated risk management. The condition monitoring of existing flood protection systems like dams plays a key role in this. HoSMoS is investigating the extent to which multitemporal interferometric radar with synthetic aperture (InSAR) can detect long-term deformations in flood protection structures. This technology uses satellite data and enables remote monitoring and retrospective analysis back to 2015, for example using Sentinel satellite data.
“Monitoring by satellite promises great potential for flood protection, which is why we want to investigate in this project whether satellite monitoring is possible in principle under the special boundary conditions that prevail in such structures,” explains Dr. Vazul Boros MBA, project manager at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology.
The innovative value of HoSMoS
Current methods for monitoring flood protection facilities rely on local inspections, geodetic surveys or, in exceptional cases, GNSS sensors and drone technologies. However, these methods are often costly and economically inefficient. HoSMoS aims to investigate the potentials and limitations of InSAR technology under real-life conditions:
- How do natural vegetation, material properties and the orientation of linear structures influence the accuracy of the measurements?
- Are the achievable accuracies compatible with the requirements for monitoring?
- Which seasonal effects and environmental influences need to be taken into account and compensated for?
The results could form the basis for comprehensive, automated monitoring that records deformation trends over long periods of time and identifies potentially critical areas at an early stage.
Future perspectives
In the long term, satellite-based monitoring of flood protection systems offers great advantages: higher spatial and temporal resolutions, early warnings through precise long-term analyses and more efficient use of resources. HoSMoS thus makes an important contribution to more sustainable and technology-based adaptation to the effects of climate change.
