Land cover and flood type govern the detection limits of satellite-based flood mapping across diverse global flood events
arXiv:2606.07780v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Floods are among the most destructive natural hazards, and their increasing frequency under climate change makes satellite-based inundation mapping essential for disaster response. Geospatial foundation models pretrained on satellite archives offer geographic transferability, but their operational reliability across diverse, unseen events remains uncharacterized. Here we deploy Prithvi-EO-2.0 across 19 out-of-distribution flood events (2017-2025) spanning six continents, eight climate zones, and six flood mechanisms, validating against two inde
The increasing frequency of destructive flood events due to climate change creates an urgent need for advanced satellite-based mapping, driving rapid development in this field.
This development improves the accuracy and operational reliability of satellite-based flood mapping, critical for disaster response and mitigation planning by governments and aid organizations.
The ability to accurately detect and map flood events globally across diverse land cover and flood types will be significantly enhanced, improving real-time response and long-term adaptation strategies.
- · Disaster response agencies
- · Insurance industry
- · Geospatial AI companies
- · Affected populations
- · Traditional flood modeling techniques
- · Regions lacking satellite infrastructure
More precise and rapid flood damage assessments become possible.
Improved flood risk modeling could lead to changes in urban planning and infrastructure investment.
Enhanced monitoring capabilities might contribute to more effective climate adaptation policies and international aid distribution.
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Read at arXiv cs.LG