Application of Envisat ASAR Image in Near Real Time Flood monitoring and Assessment in China

China is one of the countries in which flood occurs most frequently in the world and with the current economic growth; flood disaster causes more and more economic losses. Chinese government pays more attention to flood monitoring and assessment by space technology. Since1983, NOAA(AVHRR), Landsat-TM, LANDSAT-ETM+, JERS-1, SPOT, ERS-2, Radarsat-1, CBERS-1, Envisat have been used for flood monitoring and assessment. Due to the bad weather conditions during flood, microwave remote sensing is the major tools for flood monitoring. Envisat is one of the best satellite with powerful SAR. Its application for flood monitoring has been studied and its near real time(NRT) application can be realized on the basis of real-time delivery of image. During the 2005, 2006 and 2007 flood seasons, over the 31 NRT flood monitoring based on Envisat, had been carried out in Yangtze, Songua, Huaihe, pearl river basin. The result shows that Envisat SAR is very useful data source for flood disaster monitoring and assessment.