New AI tool generates satellite images of floods

Nov 29. () –

MIT scientists have developed a method that generates satellite images of the future to represent what a region would look like after a possible flooding event.

The method combines a generative AI model with a physics-based flood model to create realistic bird’s-eye views of a region, showing where flooding is likely to occur given the strength of an approaching storm.

Visualizing the possible impacts of a hurricane on people’s homes before it arrives can help residents prepare and decide whether to evacuateaccording to the authors.

As a test case, the team applied the method to the city of Houston, on the Texas coast, and generated satellite images depicting what certain locations around the city would look like after a storm comparable to Hurricane Harveand, which hit the region in 2017. The team compared these generated images with real satellite images taken of the same regions after Harvey passed. They also compared AI-generated images that did not include a physics-based flood model.

The team’s physics-enhanced method generated satellite images of future floods that were more realistic and accurate. Instead, the AI-only method generated images of flooding in places where flooding is not physically possible.

The team’s approach is a proof of concept, intended to demonstrate a case in which generative AI models can generate realistic and reliable content when combined with a physics-based model. To apply the method to other regions to represent flooding from future storms, it will need to be trained with many more satellite images to learn what flooding would look like in other regions.

“The idea is: Someday, we could use this before a hurricane, where it provides an additional layer of viewing for the public,” he says in a statement Björn Lütjens, a postdoc in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, who led the research while he was a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro). “One of the biggest challenges is encouraging people to evacuate when they are at risk. “Maybe this could be another visualization to help increase that readiness.”

The researchers publish their results in the journal IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.