Catastrophic flood disaster monitoring based on Envisat ASAR -case study in Wuzhou, China

China is a country with a lot of disasters of which floods account for a larger part. Remote sensing (RS) technology, especially with that of satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data, has been tested as an efficient way of monitoring and evaluating flood events. In June 2005, Wuzhou encounters catastrophic flood rarely seen in 100 years which cause huge losses. With the support of the Sino-Euro “Dragon Programme”, this paper discusses the application of Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) data in the monitoring of flood disaster, taking the “6.23” Wuzhou flood as an example. ASAR Image Mode data and Alternating Polarization data are used, contrasted and analyzed in raining season. Flood areas, distribution and effects to different land use are extracted with relative database. Result shows that ASAR could play important roles in flood monitoring. It does help greatly in schedule arrangements and flood controls.