TechnicalGIS

Is there flood water near my village right now?

Mark your village, farm or town. We check the latest radar image from the last 12 days for new flood water within 5 km, tell you how much land it covers and how many people live there, and point you to the river forecasts. It takes about a minute.

1. Mark the place

Latitude first, as in 3.1194, 35.5973. Copy it from Google Maps or OpenStreetMap, use your phone's location, or tap the map.

2. Or find it on the map (optional)

Mark the place first.

Usually ready in about a minute. Free, up to 15 new questions a day each; answers we've already worked out are instant and don't count. Privacy.

Choose a country to see its districts, then tap the map to mark the place.

District boundaries from geoBoundaries, simplified for the web.

See all the community tools, or Farm check for one farm.

How it works

  1. Radar. Sentinel-1 radar sees through cloud and works at night, so it can map floods in the middle of the rains. We take the newest images of a 10 km square around your point.
  2. New water only. We compare them with images from a dry month and remove rivers, lakes and land that is usually under water, using the JRC Global Surface Water record.
  3. People. We count the people living on the flooded land from the GHSL 2025 population grid.

Sentinel-1 passes each place every 6 to 12 days, so the image may be a few days old. Radar can miss shallow water among crops, trees or buildings. For river levels and flood forecasts, use GloFAS and your national weather service.

You get a short answer with the big numbers, a one-page sheet to print, a text message you can copy or send on WhatsApp, and the figures as a spreadsheet (CSV).

Official sources

We check the satellite record. For warnings and advice, go to the people whose job it is:

Data and credits

Licences checked on each provider's own page, last on 29 October 2026.

SourceLicenceCredit
Sentinel-1 radiometrically terrain corrected backscatter CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel-1 data, processed to RTC by Catalyst and provided by Microsoft Planetary Computer under CC BY 4.0.
JRC Global Surface Water occurrence Free of charge, without restriction of use (Copernicus programme) Source: EC JRC/Google. Pekel, J.-F. et al. (2016), Nature 540, 418–422. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature20584.
GHSL GHS-POP R2023A population grid (2025) CC BY 4.0 European Commission, Joint Research Centre: GHS-POP R2023A. Pesaresi, M. et al. (2024), Int. J. Digital Earth 17(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/17538947.2024.2390454. CC BY 4.0. Resampled and summed over the flooded area by TechnicalGIS.
geoBoundaries administrative boundaries Per country (CC BY, ODbL or open government licence) Runfola, D. et al. (2020) geoBoundaries: A global database of political administrative boundaries. PLoS ONE 15(4): e0231866.

Questions

How is this different from Flood impact?
Flood impact maps a whole district for the dates you choose, including past floods. Flood now looks at one place, within 5 km, in the latest image. Use it when you need to know about today.
Why was nothing found when I can see water?
The latest radar image may be from before the water came, or the water may be shallow among crops, trees or houses, which radar can miss. The answer says which day the image was taken.
Do you forecast floods?
No. We show what the radar saw. River forecasts come from GloFAS and your national weather service, and the answer links to both.
Can I use the answer in a report?
Yes, in reports, funding bids, meetings and on notice boards. Keep the line "Generated at TechnicalGIS.com" and the data credits. Each answer has its own link and is kept for 90 days.

See real answers for real places, all the community tools or read what we're for. Need it for a whole region or every month? Talk to us.