The final 'default' product will be a database ("record") of flooding-related observations derived from >6 years of 20 m resolution Sentinel-1 observations made over Europe:

• floodwater extent
• exclusion mask (i.e. unclassified areas)
• permanent water bodies
• classification uncertainty

In addition, higher level products will be derived from the 'default' product based on specific user requirements (e.g. maximum flood extent map, aggregate monthly extent map, number of persons affected by floods, critical infrastructure impacted by floods, etc.). 

A representative demonstration dataset containing examples of all products mentioned above has been generated for pre-selected areas of interest in Sweden and Italy for the year 2019. The data set will be shared with the Global Flood Partnership community in November 2020. To upscale the service and generate the data set over Europe for the period 2014-2020 an implementation of the service on a DIAS is currently under review. No definite timeline of the pilot can be provided yet, but the aim is to generate the full dataset before July 2021.

The main outcome will be a record of flooding-related information provided as maps (in geotiff format). Time series of different parameters (e.g. flood extent variations) can be easily derived from these maps.

Discussions are under way with several cloud providers (DIAS, EGI, CloudSigma) to define a plan for the processing of the Sentinel-1 collection.

We currently plan to make the dataset available through a web-based application.

Hydrological extremes such as floods have enormous environmental, social and economic consequences and it is expected that climate change effects combined with a growing population in ill-planned flood-prone coastal and riverine areas will increase their impacts in the future. Understanding historical trends in flooding greatly enhances the ability of flood managers to take action and to address the underlying risk. The ‘water bodies and floodwater record’ shall support different applications and research activities of the members of the Global Flood Partnership in the fields of climate research, large scale flood forecasting, flood hazard and risk analyses, land use monitoring etc.

The database generated by the pilot shall become a reference product for flooding-related disaster risk reduction in Europe. The EO community active in the field may take advantage of this product to derive higher level products informing, for example, on flood hazard and risk and continental scale.

The data can be downloaded for free for scientific exploitation. Different models are currently under review for enabling a commercial exploitation of the products. The retrieval algorithms embed a patented technology of LIST. The policy of the LIST does not allow code sharing. 

We plan to register our pilot in the NextGEOSS service catalogue. Discussions with the NextGEOSS project team are still ongoing.