Role of Remote Sensing in Flood Monitoring in 1998
遥感在1998年洪水监测中的作用

There were extremely heavy flood disasters in the middle reaches of the Changjiang River and the Nenjiang-Songhuajiang regions in North-East China in summer 1998. In the continuous monitoring and assessment of the historical flood disasters the remote sensing techniques and Geographic Information System have played an important role. During the flood season 38 scenes of satellite radar images have been received, processed and analyzed and all the possible images from meteorological satellite have also been used. With the airborne imaging radars the remote sensing aircraft have been over 20 times taken off and flown over the flooding areas. By using the remote sensing and GIS the flood and the flooding areas have been monitored and assessed.With the satellite and airborne remote sensing the waterlogged areas caused by heavy raining later July 1998 in Wuhan region, the Hubei Province, the flooding areas in the Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi Provinces of the middle reaches of the Changjiang River, including the Dongting and Poyang Lakes regions and in the Helongjiang, Jilin Provinces and the Inner-Mongolia Autonomous Region have been estimated from the imageries by the flood information extraction. The objective and relative accurate data have been obtained and provided to the agencies related to the disaster fighting and disaster. The practice of the flood monitoring by remote sensing and relevant information technologies has proved its important role. Meanwhile, in this paper some existed problems in the recent conditions hare also been analyzed. In order to increase the ability of the remote sensing some suggestions have been proposed. It is the special importance to strengthen the study on the flood prediction and warning.