Flooding in Southern Germany

Since 30th May 2024, prolonged and heavy rainfall has caused water levels to rise sharply in southern Germany, especially in the border region of Baden-Württemberg and later in Bavaria. The resulting floods were spread over a large area, especially in Swabia and in the Danube region, so that numerous emergency measures were necessary, including by the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK), the THW, the DLRG and the German Armed Forces. The work of the authorities and aid organisations continues, as the water is still causing prolonged flooding in some regions, while clean-up and drainage work is already underway in others. ZKI continues to support the work of the authorities and aid organisations with various products.

Aerial image aquisition

Due to the long-lasting and dense cloud cover in the flood areas, no optical satellite images were available for the acute crisis situation. DLR therefore carried out airborne flights on Monday, 3th June 2024 and Tuesday, 4th June 2024 to record aerial image data. The DLR images with a resolution of approx. 10 cm were recorded with the 3K Camera of the DLR Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF) in cooperation with the Institute of Flight Experiments (FX). The data was processed in near real time and could be made available as a map and in the web viewer the following day at the latest.

Satellite data

Various satellite data were used to derive the water surfaces. Large-scale flood masks were derived from Sentinel-1 images using automated flood processors at DLR (raster files available for download below), calculated to the best of our knowledge and within a very short time frame with the available material.

For more detailed analyses, high-resolution satellite data, such as umbra radar data and optical data, was also provided by European Space Imaging as part of the IFAS project. Flood areas were also derived from this for individual hot spots.

ZKI web application of flooding event

The DLR-ZKI has provided a web viewer that gives emergency services, humanitarian actors and authorities access to current satellite images, some of which are high-resolution, and DLR aerial images as well as additional analyses. The application is regularly updated with new data. Users from authorities or humanitarian aid organisations with a legitimate interest are welcome to contact zki@dlr.de to obtain access to the web viewer.