MULTI-SOURCED, REMOTE SENSING DATA IN LEVEES MONITORING: CASE STUDY OF SAFEDAM PROJECT

Abstract. In the following study, the authors present the development of a created levee monitoring system – a supplement to the existing programs of flood protection providing flood hazard and risk maps in Poland. The system integrates multi-source information about levees, acquiring and analysing various types of remote sensing data, such as the photogrammetric and LiDAR data obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, optical and radar satellite data. These datasets are used in order to assess the levee failure risk resulting from their condition starting from a general inspection using satellite data and concluding with UAV data usage in a detailed semiautomatic inventory. Finally, the weakest parts of a levee can be defined to create reliable flood hazard maps in case of levee failure, thus facilitating the constant monitoring of the water level between water gauges. The presented system is an example of a multisource data integration, which by the complementation of each system, provides a powerful tool for levee monitoring and evaluation. In this paper, the authors present a scope of the preventative configuration of the SAFEDAM system and the possible products of remote sensing data processing as the result of a hierarchical methodology of remote sensing data usage, thus leading to a multicriteria analysis defining the danger associated with the risk of levee failure.