The FDRI team are actively building opportunities to advance the science of floods and droughts by engaging with the satellite remote sensing community.

FDRI staff played a major role in setting up and chairing two recent sessions on satellite hydrology. The first, on 4 March 2025 and organised by Catapult Satellite Applications as part of their Satuccino series, was Satuccino's first science-themed event. FDRI Senior Hydrometric Scientist Nick Everard conceived and co-organised the event, as well as presenting his work exploring the use of satellites to monitor river flows. The science and learnings shared across all presentations will be useful to FDRI. You can watch a recording of all the presentations on the Catapult YouTube channel.

A satellite image of a stretch of the River Severn

This meeting led to remote sensing specialists Umbra Space working with FDRI, giving us access to very high-resolution (0.5 metre) satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery, which shows dramatic changes to the River Severn driven by recent flooding. In the satellite image on the left you can see in the circled area that during flooding, the river has cut through a large meander, bringing the river closer to the nearby town and creating a new body of standing water. 

We are excited to continue working with Umbra and other partners to move remote sensing capabilities forward. 

The second, on 13-14 March, organised by the World Meterological Organisation, included contributors such as hydrology leads from NASA, the European Space Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as well as satellite operators. 

These interactions improve our knowledge of the potential of satellite remote sensing and help to build links to data providers. We are looking forward to building these partnerships and exploring the possibilities of these technologies as the project progresses.