Developer Builds Open-Source Python Pipeline to Map Floods Using SAR Satellite Data

A developer has released an open-source Python pipeline that converts raw Sentinel-1 SAR satellite data into actionable flood maps, addressing the limitations of optical satellites during cloudy storm conditions. The tool tackles three core SAR processing challenges: invalid zero-value border pixels, distinguishing new floodwater from permanent water bodies, and exporting transparent GeoTIFFs compatible with QGIS. Permanent water features such as rivers and lakes are sourced from OpenStreetMap via OSMnx and subtracted from the detected water mask to isolate actual flood damage. The pipeline outputs vector data in GeoJSON and Shapefile formats, interactive Folium HTML maps, and QGIS-ready raster overlays. The full notebook is publicly available on GitHub under an open-source license.