The SpaceNet 8 Challenge - From Foundation Mapping to Flood Detection

Abstract

Floods are one of the major types of natural disasters responsible for loss of life, destruction of buildings and infrastructure, erosion of arable land, and environmental hazards around the world. Climate change, increasing populations, and urbanisation of flood plains will only increase the risk of flooding in the next few years. SpaceNet 8 presents a dataset that combines building footprint detection, road network extraction, and flood detection covering 850km2, including ~32,000 buildings and ~ 1,300 km of roads, of which ~ 13% and ~ 15% are flooded, respectively.