# Mapping inundation according to flow rates¶

• Compatability: Notebook currently compatible with both the NCI and DEA Sandbox environments

• Products used: wofs_albers, BoM Water Data Online

## Background¶

Many of Australia’s water bodies are regulated by humans. Flows are controlled by regulatory bodies such as the Murray Darling Basin Authority and local governments to meet the needs of water users while maintaining ecosystems dependant on the surface water. It is important that regulators know where the water goes when it goes overbank to help manage wetland inundations for environmental purposes and be informed of rural or residential areas likely to be flooded as a result of a large dam release.

Gauges have been placed along river systems all over Australia to monitor flow rates and water levels, however tracking where water goes when it spills over bank at a certain rate is challenging without combining the gauge data with satellite data.

### Digital Earth Australia use case¶

The Water Observations from Space (WOfS) dataset detects surface water in Australia based on Landsat data. By linking this dataset with gauge data, we can get information on where the water goes when it goes overbank according to flow rates measured by the gauge. Being able to see where water goes at different flow rates is valuable information for water regulators.

## Description¶

In this example, we take gauge data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Water Data Online webpage and link it to WOfS data to create a summary image of water frequency according to a user-specified flow rate. The worked example demonstrates how to:

1. Generate a Flow Duration Curve from stream gauge data

3. Call WOfS data by flow rate as opposed to chronological time range

5. Generate a frequency image of water from the WOfS data

## Getting started¶

To run this analysis, run all the cells in the notebook, starting with the “Load packages” cell.

Load key Python packages and supporting functions for the analysis. This notebook relies on a module called dea_bom, which is located in the Scripts directory.

[1]:

%matplotlib inline

import os
import sys
import pickle
import datacube
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import xarray as xr
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from pathlib import Path
from IPython.display import display
from datacube.utils import geometry
from datacube.utils.geometry import CRS
from datacube.helpers import write_geotiff

sys.path.append('../Scripts')
import dea_bom



### Connect to the datacube¶

[2]:

dc = datacube.Datacube(app='Inundation_mapping')


## Retrieve stream gauge data¶

This box retrieves data from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Water Data Online webpage using the dea_bom module. We restrict the list of gauges to locations that we have identified as having valid data.

[3]:

stations_pkl = Path('../Supplementary_data/Inundation_mapping/stations.pkl')

# If cache exists, get station data from cache
if stations_pkl.exists():
else:
print('Fetching from BoM')
stations = dea_bom.get_stations()
pickle.dump(stations, open(str(stations_pkl), 'wb'))

# Filter list to stations with available data
stations = [i for i in stations if i.name in stations_with_data]

# Preview the first five stations loaded
stations[:5]

Loading from cache

[3]:

[namespace(name='15 MILE @ GRETA STH', pos=(-36.61945775, 146.24407214), url='http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/services/stations/403213'),
namespace(name='15 MILE @ WANGARATTA', pos=(-36.36666667, 146.2833333), url='http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/services/stations/403239'),
namespace(name='16 Mile Waterhole', pos=(-18.876921, 139.360487), url='http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/services/stations/913010A'),
namespace(name='163 Clifton Rd', pos=(-32.97808, 115.90111), url='http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/services/stations/6131318'),
namespace(name='18 Mile Swamp HorseX', pos=(-27.49561971, 153.50836409), url='http://bom.gov.au/waterdata/services/stations/144005A')]


## Plot a map of stations and select a gauge that contains data¶

Running this cell will generate a map displaying the locations of stream gauges in Australia. It will take about 20 seconds to load. Choose a gauge on the map by clicking on it. Note that after you click on a gauge it can take a second or two to respond.

When you have the station you want, click the Done button before moving onto the next box. If you want to choose a different gauge after having pressed the Done button, you must re-run this box to regenerate the map then choose another gauge and press Done again.

Note: If all gauges you click on return “0 observations”, this could indicate an issue with fetching data from the BOM webpage. In this case, re-start the notebook and try again later

[5]:

gauge_data, station = dea_bom.ui_select_station(stations,
zoom=10,
center=(-34.72, 143.17));



## Generate a flow duration curve from the data selected above¶

A flow duration curve is a way of displaying flow rate data that is often used by hydrologists to characterise a river. Flows for each day are ranked from highest to lowest flow on the y-axis. The x-axis is “exceedence”, which means “the percentage of the time the river was at that flow or higher”, with the formula for the x-axis being 1-(rank/number of data points) * 100. A flow duration curve is useful for this application as it allows the user to select satellite data by flow rate rather than by date.

The code in the box below will automatically select the latitude and longitude of the selected gauge, but you can enter a different lat and lon if you want by editing the commented out lat and lon lines in the code below. The output will tell you what lat and lon has been selected. The buffer, which is the radius around the location point, is set to 8000 meters but you can change it if you like.

Note: If nothing happens when you run this cell, return to the previous cell and click the Done button

[6]:

# The lat and lon takes the location of the gauge. You can change the lat
# and lon to a different location if necessary, just comment out out this
# lat, lon = pos line below and define your own.
lat, lon = station.pos

# lat =
# lon =

# The buffer is how many meters radius around the location you want to display.
buffer = 8000

# Rearranging data into a flow duration curve
gauge_data = gauge_data.dropna()
gauge_data = gauge_data.sort_values('Value')
gauge_data['rownumber'] = np.arange(len(gauge_data))
gauge_data['Exceedence'] = (1 - (gauge_data.rownumber / len(gauge_data))) * 100

# Plotting the flow duration curve
gauge_data.plot(x='Exceedence', y='Value', figsize=(11, 7))
plt.ylabel('Cubic meters per second')
plt.grid(True)
plt.title('FDC')

print(f'You have selected: lat = {lat}')
print(f'You have selected: lon = {lon}')


You have selected: lat = -34.71966901
You have selected: lon = 143.1698626


## Enter the y-axis parameters in cubic meters per second¶

[7]:

# What part of the Flow Duration Curve do you want to look at?
yaxis_lower_parameter = 250
yaxis_higher_parameter = 1750


Plotting the flow duration curve on a log scale allows us to better understand the extremeties of the flow rates. The next cell displays the selected part of the flow duration curve on a log scale.

[8]:

# Plot the data on a log scale
gauge_data.plot(x='Exceedence',
y='Value',
logy=True,
title='Selected range displayed on a log scale',
figsize=(11, 7))
plt.axhspan(yaxis_lower_parameter,
yaxis_higher_parameter,
color='red',
alpha=0.2)
plt.ylabel('Cubic meters per second (log)');



The next cell uses Dask to load only the parameters of the WOfS data without loading the images, which is a faster way to load WOfS data. Loading only the parameters is enough to link the WOfS dataset to the dataset from the stream gauge. The data are linked by date using xarray’s .interp() function. The code then takes into account the flow rate parameters entered by the user and creates a list of dates where there was a satellite pass while the gauge was reading that value. The output tells the user how many passes there were.

[9]:

# Set up a query which defines the area and time period to load data for
x, y = geometry.point(lon, lat, CRS('WGS84')).to_crs(CRS('EPSG:3577')).points[0]
query = {'x': (x - buffer, x + buffer),
'y': (y - buffer, y + buffer),
'time': ('1988-01-01', '2019-10-01'), # Change this date accordingly
'crs': 'EPSG:3577'}

# not the actual satellite data)
group_by='solar_day',
**query)

# Merging satellite data with gauge data by timestamp
gauge_data_xr = gauge_data.to_xarray()
merged_data = gauge_data_xr.interp(Timestamp=wofs_albers.time, method='nearest')

# Here is where it takes into account user input for the FDC
specified_level = merged_data.where((merged_data.Value > yaxis_lower_parameter) &
(merged_data.Value < yaxis_higher_parameter),
drop=True)

# Get list of dates to keep
date_list = specified_level.time.values


You are about to load 211 satellite passes


The box below will load the selected WOfS images with .compute() and then cloud filter the images, meaning it will take out images that had too much cloud to see anything. It does this by using the .make_mask() function to calculate the fraction of cloud pixels in each image. The output will tell you how many passes remain after they were cloud filtered.

[10]:

# Load the passes that happened during the specified flow parameters
specified_passes = wofs_albers.sel(time=date_list).compute()

# Calculate the number of cloudy pixels per timestep
ncloud_pixels = cc.sum(dim=['x', 'y'])

# Calculate the total number of pixels per timestep
npixels_per_slice = (specified_passes.water.shape[1] *
specified_passes.water.shape[2])

# Calculate the proportion of cloudy pixels
cloud_pixels_fraction = (ncloud_pixels / npixels_per_slice)

# Filter out "too cloudy" passes (i.e. more than 50% cloud)
clear_specified_passes = specified_passes.water.isel(
time=cloud_pixels_fraction < 0.5)

print(f'After cloud filtering, there are '
f'{clear_specified_passes.time.shape[0]} passes available')

After cloud filtering, there are 181 passes available


## Generating an image of the waterbody based on flow¶

This cell will generate a water frequency image for the selected location using the passes indicated above. One large plot is generated for easy viewing. A small plot next to the flow duration curve with the selected parameters is generated to remind the user which part of flow duration curve the images relates to.

[11]:

# Identify all wet and dry pixels

# Calculate how frequently each pixel was wet when it was observed
clear = wet + dry
frequency = wet / clear

# Remove persistent NAs that occur due to mountain shadows
frequency = frequency.fillna(0)

# Set pixels that remain dry 100% of the time to nodata so they appear white
frequency = frequency.where(frequency != 0)

# Plotting the image
fig, axes = plt.subplots(nrows=1,
ncols=2,
figsize=(14, 9),
gridspec_kw={'width_ratios': [3, 1]})
frequency.plot(ax=axes[0])
axes[0].set_title('Water frequency\n(percentage of wet observations)')
axes[0].axis('off')

# Plot the gauge data
gauge_data.plot(ax=axes[1], x='Exceedence', y='Value', logy=True, legend=False)
axes[1].axhspan(ymin=yaxis_lower_parameter,
ymax=yaxis_higher_parameter,
color='red',
alpha=0.2)
axes[1].set_title('Specified range for which the\nimage was generated (FDC log)')
axes[1].set_ylabel('Cubic meters per second (log)')

plt.tight_layout()



## Save the file as a GeoTIFF¶

You might want to use this water frequency image in another workflow. The following code will export the image as a .tif GeoTIFF file that can be loaded into common GIS software (e.g. ArcMap or QGIS).

Enter a name for the .tif file below. The ../ part of the name means it will save this file one directory up from where this notebook is saved, i.e. in your dea-notebooks folder.

[12]:

# Set the output file name
file_name = '../file_name_here.tif'

# Set up the file for writing
frequency_dataset = frequency.to_dataset()
frequency_dataset.attrs=wofs_albers.attrs

# Write GeoTIFF to a location
write_geotiff(file_name, frequency_dataset)


Contact: If you need assistance, please post a question on the Open Data Cube Slack channel or on the GIS Stack Exchange using the open-data-cube tag (you can view previously asked questions here). If you would like to report an issue with this notebook, you can file one on Github.

Compatible datacube version:

[13]:

print(datacube.__version__)

1.7+142.g7f8581cf


## Tags¶

Browse all available tags on the DEA User Guide’s Tags Index

Tags: NCI compatible, sandbox compatible, WOfS, dea_bom, get_stations, ui_select_station, time series, image compositing, GeoTIFF, exporting data, external data, interactive, widgets, inland water, real world