Remote sensing estimates of impervious surfaces for hydrological modelling of changes in flood risk during high-intensity rainfall events

摘要

This paper addresses the accuracy and applicability of medium resolution (MR) remote sensing estimates of impervious surfaces (IS) for urban land cover change analysis. Landsat-based vegetation indices (VI) are found to provide fairly accurate measurements of sub-pixel imperviousness for urban areas at different geographical locations within Europe, and to be applicable for cities with diverse morphologies and dissimilar climatic and vegetative conditions. Detailed data on urban land cover changes can be used to examine the diverse environmental impacts of past and present urbanisation, including the importance of such changes for the exposure of cities towards the occurrence and impacts of climate extremes like high-intensity rainfall events.