Introduction
RSS-Hydro is a Luxembourg-based company focused on developing geospatial and modeling intelligence to manage climate risks. We partner with national and international organizations, engaging in collaborative research to create science-based solutions for diverse clients across various sectors. Leveraging Earth Observation (EO) and numerical modeling, our cutting-edge research addresses a wide range of applications and perspectives. This cross-disciplinary approach pushes innovation, enabling us to bridge knowledge gaps and develop holistic, sustainable solutions that wouldn't be possible with traditional, siloed methods.
EO across industries
EO analyses deliver valuable insights across industries. RSS-Hydro specializes in satellite EO-based flood detection, mapping, and monitoring at various scales globally. The scalability and global reach of these methods enable stakeholders across sectors—including humanitarian aid, emergency response, and insurance—to leverage flood maps for coordinated action. Objective, satellite-derived flood observations have a profound impact on how climate risks are understood, anticipated, and managed.
While EO offers significant advantages, consistency for flood applications remains a key challenge. Inherent sensor limitations, such as revisit times and cloud cover, often impede our understanding of surface water dynamics, particularly during flood events. Despite the increasing number of both public and private satellites, consistent flood monitoring remains surprisingly elusive. These data gaps necessitate further research into improving the reliability and consistency of EO-based flood detection and monitoring. RSS-Hydro is at the forefront of this effort, developing innovative projects to better integrate multi-mission EO data into comprehensive flood mapping and monitoring systems.
Multi-mission EO
By leveraging the abundance of daily data from multiple satellite sources, RSS-Hydro ensures critical flooding information is available when needed, eliminating reliance on specific satellite overpasses or timely tasking of commercial satellites. To further refine this approach, RSS-Hydro is hosting a PhD researcher from RMIT University that is analyzing the vast amount of existing satellite data, identifying synergies between different missions, and developing optimal strategies for integrating this multi-mission information into a flood detection and monitoring method. This approach will provide RSS-Hydro with necessary improvements and consistency in observations to improve our anticipation and response to future hazardous events.
Figure caption: Flooding in Valencia, Spain, captured by Sentinel-2 on October 31, 2024. Image credit ©ESA.