Image Processing with Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST)

NEST has been conceived for reading, post-processing, analyzing and visualizing data from the following
satellite missions:

ESA SAR missions: ERS1 & 2, ENVISAT, Sentinel 1

Third Party Mission SAR-data: ALOS PALSAR, JERS SAR, TerraSAR-X, Radarsat-1 and 2,
Cosmo-Skymed.

It provides both basic and advanced tools for the SAR user community:

Data conversion and Export, Calibration, Filtering, Resampling,

Coregisteration, Orthorectification, Interferometry

SAR Ocean Tools

NEST shares the same core architecture with the BEAM toolbox, developed for analysis of optical data.
Fully Open Source under the GNU GPL
Portable Java implementation allows use on multiple hardware platforms and operating systems
Modular Easy changes and upgrades
Extensible API to allow users to add modules to extend capability of NEST

NEST is freely available from http://earth.esa.int/nest

Radar Flood Mapping

The principle behind using radar for flood mapping is that the strength of the radar backscatter depends on
the roughness of the surface it interacts with. Water bodies generally create a very smooth (unless strong
winds induce waves) and homogenous surface. Therefore the incident, side looking, radar pulse will be
scattered away from the radar sensor (specular reflection) and the radar image over that area will be black,
or very dark due to little return of the radar pulse. The surrounding rough land surface will be much brighter,
due to higher return, thereby distinguishing it from the water surface. In order to distinguish flooded areas
from permanent water bodies, an image acquired during the flood needs to be compared with another image
acquired when there was no flood. Both images need to have been acquired from the same sensor
geometry. This is because the brightness of the radar return depends on the angle and direction of the
incident radar pulse.

Flood Mapping Using ASAR Data with NEST

1. Create project file and open data
File / New Project
File / Open Raster Product / open the following files:
ASA_WSM_1PNUPA20080301_033422_000000732066_00261_31377_2804.N1
ASA_WSM_1PNUPA20040902_033722_000000732030_00032_13112_2806.N1
Both these images were acquired over Ecuador and were used to map a flooding event as part of an
activation of the International Charter for Space and Major Disasters. One image was acquired during the
floods (in March 2008), this will be known as the crisis image the other image is an archive from September
2004, covering approximately the same area (an archive image covering exactly the same track had not
been acquired previously). This second image will be known as the archive image.

2. View metadata
In the Products tab, click in the Identification folder of each image. Here you will see information taken
from the metadata files, including the mission, product type, acquisition date and time, track and orbit.

Now click on the Metadata folder and view the SPH (Specific Product Header) and MPH (Main Product
Header) files by double clicking on their names and viewing the contents in the main window. These files
contain more metadata. There is also an Abstracted Metadata section which automatically updates
whenever changes occur in the image file (e.g. pixel spacing, calibration, etc.).
3. View geographical coverage of both images
Select View / Tool Windows / Bam World Map and the following map will appear showing the footprints of
the images calculated from the metadata.

4. View and crop the images

Now open the images by clicking on the Bands folders and double clicking on the Amplitude band. [The
Intensity band is just a virtual band, created on the fly, it is not part of product. It is the square of the
amplitude and is used for example for speckle filtering.]
Inspecting both the images, notice the extensive dark areas in the centre of the crisis image? This is the area
of flooding we would like to map. We will only be interested in the part of the images where the floods are
visible. Cropping the images to include only this area will save much computation time. Zoom into the area of
flooding in the crisis image, then click on Utilities / Spatial Subset from View select the area to crop by
dragging the edges of the blue box in the quicklook window. Then click OK.

Although a subset has now been created (and a new entry created in the products view) this is still a virtual
image file, it has not yet been saved to disk. To save the subset, select the subset in the products view and
then click File / Save. The product will be saved in the NEST / BEAM internal DIMAP format, and the file will
be saved in the Processed Products folder of the project directory (unless you specify otherwise). Perform
the same steps for the archive image, cropping approximately the same corresponding area and saving the
image in BEAM DIMAP format.
In the Project window, notice the subset products in the Processed Products folder.
Save the project by clicking on File / Save.
5. Orthorectification
We will now orthorectify the images with a DEM. Select one of the subset images in the Products View.
Then select Geometry / Terrain Correction / Range-Doppler Terrain Correction. In the I/O Parameters
tab of the Terrain-Correction window, ensure the Save as checkbox is selected. In the Processing
Parameters tab select the Amplitude band in the Source Bands list (click on Amplitude so it becomes
highlighted). Select the SRTM 3Sec GeoTiff as the Digital Elevation Model. Then click Run. Repeat the
process for the other subset image.

6. Create stack and compare images

In order to compare the two image we will stack them together and view them in the same viewer. We will
then create a 3 colour composite to inspect the changes between the two acquisition times. Go to Utilities /
Create Stack. A Create Stack window will appear. Click on the name of one of the orthorectified images
from the Project or Products View, drag it with the mouse and drop it in the blank white row in the
ProductSet-Reader tab of the Create Stack window. Repeat the process for the other calibrated image. In
the Create Stack tab, select one image as the master and the other as the slave. In the Write tab, give a
name to the output file. Then click on Process.
Close all image viewers. Open one of the bands of the stacked image. In the bottom left window select
Layer Manager. In the Layer Manager window click on the plus sign on the top right and select Image of
Band / Tie-Point Grid, then click Next. Select the other band of the stacked image, then click Finish. Now
in the Layer Manager window you will see both bands of the stacked image listed. Moving the

Transparency slider will enable you to adjust the transparency of one band on top of the other. Inspect the
differences between the two bands by zooming, panning and changing the transparency of the image
channels.

In order to view the differences between the archive and crisis image in one layer we will create an RGB
image view. To do this we first need to ensure there are 3 channels from which to create an RGB image.
Select Utilities / Create Band by Band Maths In the Band Maths window select Edit Expression In
the Band Maths Expression Editor select the 2004 image band. Then click OK.

In the stack there are now 3 bands: one of the crisis image and two of the archive. We can now create an
RGB image. click on View / Open RGB Image View Select the 2008 image as Red and the 2004 image
as both Green and Blue. This combination will enable us to distinguish between areas that are flooded and
permanent water bodies. In areas that are flooded, the red channel will be dark but the green and blue

channels will be bright, therefore the pixels should appear bright cyan. Permanent water bodies will be dark
in all the channels. All other areas should be a shade of grey as the backscatter intensity should be the
same. However, in this case the images are not from the same track, therefore there will be greater
differences between the image backscatter even in areas where they should be the same (due to the
different look angles).

7. Save RGB image view as a KMZ file

Click on File / Product Writers / Export View as Google Earth KMZ Once the file is saved, double click
on the image filename to view it in Google Earth. In Google Earth, overlay streets and place names onto
the image to see which areas are flooded.

8. Calculation of flooded area

We are now going to try to quantify the magnitude of the floods. To do this we will need to know the number
of flood pixels. The first step will be to define thresholds for the pixel values in both images where the flood is
present. Keeping the RGB image view open, click on Pixel Info. As you move the mouse cursor over the
image you will see the pixel values in this window.

Good threshold values for flooded areas could be < 800 for the crisis image and > 900 for the archive image.
This will mask flooded pixels, without classifying permanent water bodies as flooded areas.
To apply these thresholds we will use the ROI tools. Open one of the bands of the stacked image. Select
View / Tool Windows / Mask/ROI Manager.

In the Mask/ROI Manager window, click on the icon

A New Logical Band Maths Expression window appears. In this window select the Show bands
checkbox, and then type the following expression in the Expression box, clicking on the band name in the
Data sources list to include the band names in the expression:

Then click OK.

Back in the Mask/ROI Manager window click on the checkbox beneath the eye symbol to view the mask on
the image, and select the mask in the Layer Manager window.

To mask only the flooded area and to avoid the edges containing regions not covered by both images, we
will apply the mask only to the part where both images overlap. Click on the polygon drawing tool, and
draw a polygon, by left clicking on the mouse, that covers the area where there is coverage of both images.
Double click to close the polygon.

Now in the Mask/ROI Manager window, select both the mask and the geometry rows, and then click on the
symbol to create a new mask containing the intersection of the selected masks.

Now view the results of this new mask.

Export the view as a Google Earth KMZ file, and view it in Google Earth.

To count the number of pixels covered by the floods, click on the on the Open product information button
in the main toolbar. In the window that appears, click on the Statistics tab, select Use ROI-Mask and
then click on Compute. You will now see some information about the Region Of Interest (ROI) including the
number of pixels, the percentage of image pixels within the ROI, etc.

Knowing the size of the image pixel (see range spacing and azimuth spacing in metadata) and knowing how
many pixels are masked as flood, it is possible to calculate the size of the affected area. What is the extent
of the flooding?