GOOGLE EARTH ENGINE

Requirements
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A Google Earth Engine account is required to use this code. A link is provided
in the step-by-step section of this Recommended Practice. Please Note: The
account may require a few days to be active.
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Some storage left on Google Drive (20 MB- 1GB, depending on the size of
the study area)
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Unlike software-based Recommended Practices, this cloud-based solution
has very little hardware requirements as no processing is done on the user’s
computer.
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A stable internet connection is required as the processing is done on a cloud-
based platform and the results are run through Google Earth Engine’s own
JavaScript code.
 Strengths
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The workflow can be easily applied to different areas
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Fully automatically, after specifying the area of interest and time
periods
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Very little processing time
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Near-real time monitoring events globally
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Cloud independent monitoring
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Cloud-processing allows the use of auxiliary datasets to delineate
extent (e.g. slope)
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Provides additional information on exposed population, affected
cropland & urban areas
 Limitations
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False positives from changes on the land surface
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Difficulties of detecting in urban or densely vegetated areas
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No capturing water peak due to the acquisition frequency of
Sentinel-1
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False positives caused by differences in relative orbits
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Border noise errors (when processing large areas)
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Spatial resolution of MODIS Land Cover (500 m) and JRC
GHSL Population (250 m) causes uncertainties for the damage
assessment
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Questions
– How do I track changes in inundated area?
– How can I plot inundated area changes in Google Earth Engine?
– How do I make that plot interactive?
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Objectives
– Load Sentinel-1 SAR imagery and classify water pixels
– Plot timeseries of number of reservoir surface area
– Make plot interactively display classified images
 Overview
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This code plots a timeseries of water surface area in a region
and allows the user to click on the plot and display the classified
image which produced the selected data point. Water
classification is derived from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar
(SAR). A new reservoir in the Mekong River Basin is used as an
exaple for this problem.
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Link to a static version of the full script used in this module:
https://code.earthengine.google.com/2530f17708e876ed73cb79
45fe2a1b37
SCRIPT
●
This script is structured to make it easy for the user to
select different regions or time periods. We are going to
use a reservoir in the Mekong River Basin as an example.
Note that it looks like there isn’t anything there at first,
becasue the dam was constructed very recently (June,
2017)
SCRIPT
● // Load region defined by polygon and add it to the map
● var roi = ee.Geometry.Polygon(
● [[[106.5311175986817, 14.88401360239504],
● [106.70144574301412, 14.88567468158789],
● [106.68221660149186, 14.996475939738637],
● [106.67432540134314, 15.050880175819685],
● [106.61113258648004, 15.046083385875264],
● [106.53764487153217, 15.035961287202868],
● [106.52682423644103, 14.968444128060433]]]);
● Map.addLayer(roi, {}, 'ROI')
● Map.centerObject(roi, 8)
 Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection
and filter to our region
●
A major limitation of visible satellite imagery is the presence of clouds.
●
In a region like the Mekong Basin, where it is cloudy during monsoon
season, it is very difficult to create a visible timeseries of the earth surface.
●
SAR sensors, like Sentinel-1, use radar waves, which penetrate clouds,
allowing us to get a view of the earth surface, even when clouds are
present. SAR works by sending a radar signal from the satellite towards the
earth at an off nadir angle (i.e. not straight down, but at an angle).
●
The signal hits the earth and scatters and the satellite measures how much
backscatter returns to the satellite. The amount of backscatter is determined
in part by the roughness of the surface, with smoother surfaces scattering
less. Large flat surfaces like water scatter very little and stand out as dark
spots against relatively high scattering land surface.
Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection
and filter to our region
 Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection
and filter to our region
●
Here we load the Sentinel-1 collection and filter for images of our
region taken after 2017.
●
We also filter for type of signal recieved. “VV” stands for vertical
transmit, vertical recieved. This means that both the signal
transnmited from and recieved by from the satellite is vertically
polarized.
●
Some surfaces alter the polarization of the radar signal, but for
water body detection, this is usually unused. We only care that all
of our images have the same kind of transmit/recieve
polarizations.
 Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection
and filter to our region
//Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection and filter according to data collection type
var S1 = ee.ImageCollection('COPERNICUS/S1_GRD')
.filterBounds(roi)
.filterDate('2017-01-01','2019-04-01')
.filter(ee.Filter.listContains('transmitterReceiverPolarisation', 'VV'))

//Add first image to map to get an idea of what a SAR image looks like
Map.addLayer(S1.first(),{bands: 'VV',min: -18, max: 0}, 'SAR image')
Load Sentinel-1 SAR collection
and filter to our region
 Filter Speckles
●
SAR images typically have speckle noise that degrades the
quality of the image.
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Zoom into some of the water bodies in the image and you will find
tiny bright dots. These dots will make it difficult to classify the
image as those bright speckles will be classified as land.
●
There are a number of different techniques for dealing with
speckles. We are going to use a very simple method, apply a
focal median filter. This filter looks at each pixel and its
neighboring pixels and takes the median. We then map this focal
median process across all images in the collection.
 Filter Speckles
// Filter speckle noise
var filterSpeckles = function(img) {
var vv = img.select('VV') //select the VV polarization band
var vv_smoothed = vv.focal_median(100,'circle','meters').rename('VV_Filtered')
//Apply a focal median filter
return img.addBands(vv_smoothed) // Add filtered VV band to original image
}

// Map speckle noise filter across collection. Result is same collection, with
smoothed VV band added to each image
S1 = S1.map(filterSpeckles)

//Add speckle filtered image to map to sompare with raw SAR image
Map.addLayer(S1.first(),{bands: 'VV_Filtered',min: -18, max: 0}, 'Filtered SAR
image')
Filter Speckles
 Classify Water Area
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Now we classify the water pixels in the SAR images.
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We will use a simple threshold approach to identify water. Since
water appears darking than land, we will pick a threshold of
backscatter and classify all pixels below that threshohld as water.
Lets use -16 to give us a ballpark estimate of water area.
●
This threshold is simply based on heuristics, try adjusting the
threshold and see how your classification changes. Optimal
thesholds can be determined through comparison with a training
dataset, or through more robust statstical techniques.
●
For now, we only seek to get an idea of the reservoir surface area
patterns, and not the absolute surface area.
 Classify Water Area
//Here we are using -16. This is only an approximation and will result in some
errors. Try adjusting the
var classifyWater = function(img) {
var vv = img.select('VV_Filtered')
var water = vv.lt(-16).rename('Water') //Identify all pixels below threshold
and set them equal to 1. All other pixels set to 0
water = water.updateMask(water) //Remove all pixels equal to 0
return img.addBands(water) //Return image with added classified water band
}

//Map classification across sentinel-1 collection and print to console to

inspect
S1 = S1.map(classifyWater)
print(S1)
 Add the time series plots to the
panels
●
Now we want to see a time series of water pixels in our region of interest. We
create a chart, which maps a spatial sum reducer across each image in the
collection.
●
The sum reducer simply sums all water classification pixels in the region of
interest and since all water pixels are set to 1, this gives the total number of
water pixels at each time step.
●
Note that the scale is set to 100m instead of 10m (the native resolution of
Sentinel-1) in order to speed up the calculation. This means the resulting size
of the pixels being counted is 100m pixels, not 10m.
●
This also introduces some error into our calculation. Try setting the scale back
to 10m and seeing how much difference this makes (you might have to wait a
few minutes).
 Add the time series plots to the
panels
//Make time series of water pixels within region
var ClassChart = ui.Chart.image.series({
imageCollection: S1.select('Water'),
region: roi,
reducer: ee.Reducer.sum(),
scale: 100,
})
.setOptions({
title: 'Inundated Pixels',
hAxis: {'title': 'Date'},
vAxis: {'title': 'Number of Inundated Pixels'},
lineWidth: 2
})
 Add the time series plots to the
panels
//Set the postion of the chart and add it to the map

ClassChart.style().set({
position: 'bottom-right',
width: '500px',
height: '300px'
});

Map.add(ClassChart)
Add the time series plots to the
panels
 Making Chart Interactive
●
We can add functionality to the chart by creating a callback
function which actrivates when the user clicks on a data point in
the chart.
●
This function then adds the SAR image and the classified water
area coresponding to the clicked data point to the map. We also
add a label to the map that displays the date of the currently
selected image and dynamically updates when a new image is
selected.
Making Chart Interactive
// Create a label on the map.
var label = ui.Label('Click a point on the chart to show the image for that date.');
Map.add(label);

//Create callbakc function that adds image to the map coresponding with clicked data point on chart
ClassChart.onClick(function(xValue, yValue, seriesName) {
if (!xValue) return; // Selection was cleared.

// Show the image for the clicked date.

var equalDate = ee.Filter.equals('system:time_start', xValue);
//Find image coresponding with clicked data and clip water classification to roi
var classification = ee.Image(S1.filter(equalDate).first()).clip(roi).select('Water');
var SARimage = ee.Image(S1.filter(equalDate).first());
//Make map layer based on SAR image, reset the map layers, and add this new layer
var S1Layer = ui.Map.Layer(SARimage, {
bands: ['VV'],
max: 0,
min: -20
});
Making Chart Interactive
Map.layers().reset([S1Layer]);
var visParams = {
min: 0,
max: 1,
palette: ['#FFFFFF','#0000FF']
}
//Add water classification on top of SAR image
Map.addLayer(classification,visParams,'Water')

// Show a label with the date on the map.

label.setValue((new Date(xValue)).toUTCString());
});
 Making Chart Interactive
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Now you can click on any point in the chart and the
corresponding SAR image and water classification will be added
to your map. Click around the chart and explore the reservoir’s
operational history.
●
What happened to the reservoir in July, 2018?
Making Chart Interactive