As part of the Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS), the Global Flood Monitoring (GFM) product provides a continuous monitoring of worldwide flood events, by immediately processing and analysing in near real-time (NRT) all incoming Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite imagery. The GFM product uses three independent, state-of-the-art algorithms - developed by three leading research teams (DLR, LIST, TU Wien) who are members of the GFM consortium - for systematic, automated delineation of flooded areas and water bodies based on all-weather, day-and-night Sentinel-1 SAR images.
The GFM product is designed to deliver, in NRT, critical information on ongoing floods events to users worldwide, including national authorities, emergency units, research centres, decision-makers and other stakeholders. The GFM product is specifically designed to address three major user requirements, namely:
The GFM product also provides a long-term archive of global flood monitoring data, making it an ideal source of information for planning mitigation and preparedness measures for future flood events, e.g. designing flood protection systems or calibrating hydrological models. Finally, combining data from the GFM product with data from other Copernicus services (e.g. the Copernicus Climate Change Service) can deliver useful information for addressing the challenges in the area of climate change response management.
This Product User Manual (PUM) is the reference document for all end-users and stakeholders of the GFM product of CEMS2. It provides all basic information for proper and effective use of the GFM product and its data output layers and describes the functions and capabilities of the GFM product, its applications and alternative modes of operation, and step-by-step guidance on accessing and using the GFM product. In order to enable users to become quickly familiar with the GFM product, a synthesized version of this PUM is provided online, as a Quick Start Guide. Full scientific and technical details of the GFM product are provided on-line, in the GFM Product Definition Document (PDD).
The quality of the GFM product is reported on a quarterly basis using Key Performance Indicators that monitor service availability, product timeliness, thematic quality, unique visitors, total visitors, and total downloads (European Commission, 2020). The results of the GFM product and service quality assessment are published online as Annual Reports.
The GFM product has been developed and implemented under a Framework Contract with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (European Commission, 2020), by an international consortium (the “Expert Flood Monitoring Alliance”) consisting of six partners:
| EODC (Earth Observation Data Centre for Water Resources Monitoring GmbH). | LIST (Luxembourg Institute for Science and Technology). |
| GeoVille (GeoVille Information Systems and Data Processing GmbH). | DLR (German Aerospace Centre / Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.). |
| TU Wien (Technische Universität Wien). | CIMA Foundation (International Research Centre in Environmental Monitoring). |
The GFM partnership represents Europe’s leading group of scientific experts in satellite-based flood monitoring systems, with a wide-ranging and unique experience in global flood mapping services, and extensive links with the main information services of Copernicus (the EU’s Earth observation programme), including CEMS and the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service (CLMS). From the earliest days of satellite-based flood mapping and monitoring, the individual members of the GFM consortium have built up unprecedented, complementary capabilities for flood mapping, monitoring, and related disaster risk services, and have accumulated a long history of implementing high-quality, successful applications and projects, and developing the related systems for global data processing and access.
Didn't find what you were looking for? Send us a message through the contact forms:
EFAS: https://european-flood.emergency.copernicus.eu/en/form/feedback [Flood Monitoring]
GloFAS: https://global-flood.emergency.copernicus.eu/contact-us/ [Satellite-based Global Flood Monitoring]