Application of ENVISAT ASAR image in flood monitoring for WuZhou city in 2005

In 2005 summer, flood caused serious casualties and economic loss in many regions in the People's Republic of China (PRC). According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, up to September, natural disasters across China had killed 1,630 people and caused economic losses of 163 billion yuan. Most of them is due to flood disaster or flood derived disaster, such as landslip, debris flow. According to the agreement between National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC) and Europe Spatial Agency (ESA), we can get free Envisat data for flood monitoring. In 2005, we mainly depend on ESA's Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) image for flood monitoring. In this paper, the advantages of Envisat ASAR image has been discussed, and a method of flood monitoring and assessment has been introduced. The application of Envisat ASAR image in flood monitoring and assessment of WuZhou city in the end of June has been carried out. The result shows that Envisat SAR is very useful data source for flood disaster monitoring.