05/11/2024
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Torrential rainfall inflicting lethal flash floods has hit southern and jap Spain in areas together with the Costa del Sol, the place town of Malaga is situated, and Valencia within the east. As these areas battle to deal with the aftermath, satellite tv for pc expertise has performed a vital position in assessing the damages of the affected areas.
The storms concentrated over the Magro, Turia and the Poyo river basins, releasing torrents of muddy water that turned village streets into rivers, destroyed properties and swept away bridges and autos. Over 200 individuals have misplaced their lives with hundreds displaced and lots of nonetheless lacking. Valencia’s coastal area was significantly hard-hit, receiving a yr’s value of rain in simply eight hours, in line with Spain’s nationwide climate company, Aemet.
Aemet reported that the intense rainfall resulted from a high-altitude, low-pressure climate system remoted from the jet stream. Identified regionally as DANA, these storm programs kind when chilly fronts encounter heat, humid air lots, equivalent to over the Mediterranean Sea. The storms can stay stationary earlier than dissipating, growing the potential for extreme flooding.
Earth commentary imagery and information are an essential useful resource for emergency companies, offering essential info for close to real-time response, post-event evaluation and harm evaluation. US Landsat-8 satellite tv for pc pictures captured on 30 October have been the primary as an instance the size of the catastrophe, displaying the drastic transformation of the panorama.
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 pictures under present the size of the Valencia flooding catastrophe and the drastic transformation of the panorama.
Sentinel-1 radar pictures from 19 and 31 October illustrate the extreme flooding of the Albufera Nationwide Park as a result of discharge of the Magro, Turia and Poyo rivers. This park is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and encroaches on densely populated neighbourhoods to the west.
The Copernicus Emergency Speedy Mapping Service (EMS) was activated by the Directorate-Common for Civil Safety and Emergencies (Dirección Common de Protección Civil y Emergencias) on 29 October to create maps displaying the extent and severity of the flooding in affected areas.
A number of maps have been produced and revealed to this point, the primary was revealed on 31 October, based mostly on the GeoEye acquisition from that morning.
Additional evaluation, together with a WorldView picture acquired on the identical day, reveals that greater than 4100 hectares and 3906 buildings have been impacted, whereas greater than 60,000 individuals, round 15 km of railways, and 531 km of roads have been probably impacted within the space of Horta Sud.
An evaluation of Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 imagery acquired on 31 October over Valencia province produced a map on 2 November displaying round 15,633 hectares of flooded space and roughly 190,000 individuals probably affected.
Spain’s Civil Safety Company additionally activated the Worldwide Constitution ‘Area and Main Disasters’, which mixes Earth commentary belongings from 17 house businesses and 7 business information distributors from across the globe, to offer further observations and evaluation of the catastrophe zones.
The Constitution gives this information on a best-effort, no-cost foundation to assist within the response section of main disasters. The Constitution was activated on 1 November and it was agreed that the Copernicus EMS and the Constitution would collaborate on this activation via the established information sharing agreements.
Along with CEMS, a number of organisations have agreed to assist the Constitution activation via the supply of value-added merchandise.
These organisations embrace LIST in Luxembourg, SERTIT in France, and MBRSC within the United Arab Emirates. These merchandise, anticipated to be revealed on 6 November, will praise these generated by the EMS by offering a extra detailed evaluation of the scenario.
“Area-based commentary performs a useful position throughout pure disasters just like the current floods in Spain,” mentioned Simonetta Cheli, Director of Earth Remark Programmes at ESA.
“Our mission is to quickly coordinate with companions via the Worldwide Constitution and the Copernicus Emergency Mapping Service to ship crucial, real-time Earth commentary information to assist emergency groups on the bottom. We’re dedicated to supporting rescue and reduction efforts, offering the info wanted to evaluate the harm and guarantee well timed response in affected communities.”
Past mapping broken areas, satellites might help monitor the environmental circumstances in an space affected by a hydrometeorological hazard such because the emergency that hit Spain. Information from ESA’s SMOS mission on 29 October additional illustrated the scenario, displaying saturated floor round Valencia and different areas on the day of the floods.
The SMOS satellite tv for pc, designed to measure international soil moisture over land and salinity over oceans, makes use of an revolutionary radiometer within the L-band microwave vary to provide ‘brightness temperature’ pictures, which assist derive soil moisture maps—an important useful resource within the aftermath of such disasters.
