Combining satellite data with in-situ measurements for assessing an experimental flood monitoring system

Flooding is the most common natural disaster in Europe and, in terms of economic damage, the most costly one. To plan an effective flood risk management process, a continuous flow of data about discharge and river water level as well as the capability of forecasting in advance their evolution are needed. Satellite data have been widely used in this field, offering a great support to in-situ measurements, which are often available only at a small spatial scale or, in the worst situation, completely missing. Information about soil moisture variation can provide an indirect estimation of discharge, especially useful in poorly gauged areas. In this paper we investigated such a capability by combining information about soil water content variation, in terms of a Polarization Ratio Variation Index (PRVI), recently implemented on Aqua - Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSRE) data, with discharge measurements of the Danube River Basin collected in a few rain gauge stations in Hungary.