River ice monitoring

River icing is typical in Poland in the winter season and can last between 1 and 3 months. River ice causes floods through the blockage of water flow in river bed. In addition, icing affects the transportation function of the river. Every year in Poland there is ice breaking activity on all major rivers. Observation of river ice is part of water management and presently is conducted in irregular network of in-situ ice measurement. Ground-based monitoring of river ice is rather expensive and restricted to a few locations due to limited accessibility. Therefore, there is a lack of reliable information for whole river length. Space-based observation using remote sensing techniques could provide a viable alternative and a more suitable approach. Proposed service is to provide regular information on ice events, including local flood caused by ice barricades. Service could deliver the information with the spatial resolution allowing detection of local ice cover. Such analysis is in common use for example in Canada where detailed information about ice cover on rivers is essential. This project will evaluate applicability of new type of data which could be helpful in water management and also flood related products. Each new image will be processed in order to be able to discriminate water and non-water mask on river body. The data will be classified into ice/no-ice elements (additional effort will be done to discriminate fractured ice and solid ice) and export into GIS environment to provide reports and GIS layer.