Remote sensing characterization of crop vulnerability to floods

The analysis of connections between natural disaster and food security is extremely relevant, especially in developing countries where food availability can be highly jeopardized by extreme events that damage agricultural areas and food stocks. In particular, flood events are the most impacting natural disasters on agriculture, with a percentage share of damage around 60%. This work focuses on the food-flood nexus, developing a methodology for evaluating the effects of floods on food supply by integrating remote sensing data, agricultural statistics, and water footprint databases. Based on the existing literature about extreme floods, the Bangladesh flood in 2007 and the Pakistan flood of 2010 have been selected as exemplar case studies that can highlight the effects of flood events on food availability. The analysis focused on rice as the most spread crop in Bangladesh, while it considers the national crop mix in Pakistan analysis. Results showed that the use of remote sensing data combined with other sources of onsite information is particularly useful to assess the effects of flood events on food availability. The damages caused by floods on agricultural areas are estimated in terms of crop losses and then converted into lost calories and water footprint as complementary indicators.