抄録
Across the Lower Mekong Basin, a number of areas suffer from frequent inundation, hindering social and economical development of the region. To relieve the damage caused by such inundation and to ensure stable agricultural production, continuousassessment of the damage is necessary. Damage conditions are currently surveyed by interviewing farmers; however, data gathered by this method are not sufficient to implement effective measures after water recession. To improve this situation, we decided to developsystems of inundation mapping utilizing Remote Sensing (RS) technology and theGeographic Information System (GIS).
At the beginning of the development, we selected the area along the Mekong River in LaoPDR as the pilot area. Within the pilot area, we have implemented surveys on GPS reference points and lateral and longitudinal cross measurements in major inundation regions.We installed instruments for observation of meteorology and hydrology, also reflectors thatconfirm water depth through satellite images. Furthermore, we utilized RADARSAT, which has a synthetic aperture radar enabling penetration of rain clouds to take images ofground inundation situation, and which is able to take images of specific area repeatedlywithin a few days. As a result, it has become possible to create an inundation map by overlayingtime-series inundation images.
