The Jupyter notebook demonstrates how EOdal can be used for disaster relief after the break of the Kachowka using open-source Earth Observation data.

On June 6, 2023, the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine broke. We do not yet know who or what was responsible for the collapse of the dam. What we do know, however, are the devastating consequences for the region downstream - especially for the local population.

Using freely-available optical and cloud-pentrating synthetic aperature RADAR (SAR) remote sensing data from ESA and the open-source software EOdal, timely monitoring of the flood disaster is possible and allows a precise assessment of the consequences for the local population and agriculture.

This notebook enables users to follow the development at the Kachowka Dam as well as downstream at the Dnipro or Dnieper - for example in the city of Kherson - by means of satellite images lowering the barrier of entry to work with Earth Observation data for disaster relief and emergency response.

The main findings of the evaluation of optical satellite data from ESA already impressively show the extent of the flooding by comparing before and after event images. Due to cloud cover, however, the optical data do not allow a complete near-real-time evaluation. Therefore, we additionally used SAR data penetrating through the clouds. Using simple analysis of the available RADAR data, the area inundated on June 9, 2023, was estimated to be about 25 000 ha (250 km2). Based on the generated water masks, further analysis could be undertaken to estimate the severity of the flood-related damages and associated threads. With SAR we could roughly estimate the flooded area. However, a more detailed analysis is clearly required. Wit this notebook domain users and experts have the opportunity to do so.

submitted by Lukas Graf.