SCOPE › Map flood damage from satellite imagery
Map flood damage from satellite imagery
Floods happen under cloud, which is exactly when optical satellites are blind. SCOPE pairs Sentinel-1 radar, which is not affected by cloud, with Sentinel-2 optical imagery from before and after, and reports the area that changed and where.
A real example
Pamba river, Kerala, India
SCOPE compared the river corridor across two seasons and measured 609 hectares of change along the banks.
Sentinel-1 radar. Cloud is invisible to it, which is why flood work starts here.
Who uses this
How SCOPE measures it
- Sentinel-2 optical imagery at 10 m. Every usable image in each period is cloud-masked and combined, so one bad day cannot create a false result.
- Sentinel-1 radar as an independent check. Radar is unaffected by cloud, so a change confirmed by both sensors is far more trustworthy than one seen in a single optical image.
- The same season in earlier years. Before anything is called unusual, SCOPE checks what that place normally does at that time of year.
- A confidence and a date bracket per area, plus a PDF, GeoJSON and CSV you can take to a surveyor, an insurer or a court.
What it will not do
SCOPE measures change; it does not confirm who caused it. Areas under a hectare are below what 10 m pixels can resolve. Persistent cloud limits the optical view, and the report says when that happened rather than hiding it. On its own published benchmark it found the change at 39 of 41 recorded events, raised no false alarms across 27 desert and undisturbed-forest control sites, and did flag change at city-centre controls — because cities genuinely change.
Questions
How soon after a flood can this be run?
As soon as a satellite passes and the imagery is published — usually within a day or two for radar. SCOPE itself takes about a minute.
Is a detected change proof of flood damage?
No. SCOPE measures change and suggests likely causes from land-cover maps, OpenStreetMap and weather. The cause is an interpretation, not a confirmed fact, and the report says so.
Can water that has already drained still be detected?
Often yes — receded flood water leaves damaged vegetation and sediment, which SCOPE reports as vegetation change rather than water gain.
Try it on a place you already know
If SCOPE is right about somewhere you know well, you can trust it somewhere you do not. 5 scans a day, free, no card.