Hurricane Sandy Flood Detection around New York Area with NPP/VIIRS and SRTM data

Hurricane Sandy, the largest Atlantic hurricane on record, devastated portions of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States in late October 2012. The powerful storm brought intensive rainfall and transformed some of Atlantic City's streets into rivers and inundated parts of Lower Manhattan, with water forming whitewater cascades at Ground Zero and swamping New York's financial district. In this study, we use NPP/VIIRS Imager data along with 30-m SRTM DEM data to produce decision-support information for flooding by hurricane Sandy around the New York area. This information comprises water extraction, water fraction retrieval and integration with SRTM DEM to derive a 30-m resolution water map with VIIRS 375-m water fraction product. The results show good consistency with ground truth and other data sources for the location of inundated areas.