Mathematics and Computers in Simulation 67 (2004) 365–370 Space monitoring of floods in Kazakhstan L. Spivak ∗ , O. Arkhipkin, V. Pankratov, I. Vitkovskaya, G. Sagatdinova Space Research Institute, Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan Abstract Floods are considerable menace for a part of the population of Kazakhstan living on the banks of large rivers, such as Irtish, Ural, Tobol, Ishim, etc. During spring snow thawing the volume of flow in these rivers increases, sometimes more than 1000 times sharply. They frequently go out of the banks and flood large territories. The maximal hoisting of water recorded in the river Ural in 1942, when the water was pushed up by 10–11 m above the normal level. The economical damage from flooding is estimated hundreds of millions of tenge (millions dollars). © 2004 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Space monitoring; Flood; Sen–Venan equation; Flood Monitoring Information System Since 2002 Flood Monitoring Information System (FLOMIS) operates in Kazakhstan. It allows opera- tively to receive space images of territories, where is a high hazard of flooding (see Fig. 1), and to forecast development of flooding. The technology of FLOMIS operation is described below. 1. Procedure of decoding Decoding of space images with the purpose of localization of the flood territories, it is impor- tant to conduct precisely a demarcation “water–land”. For this purpose it is possible to use some rules: 1. In the visible band of the spectrum (VIS) water has higher absorption coefficient. On the daytime images water surfaces are darker, than ground. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +7 3272 939058; fax: +7 3272 918077. E-mail address: mkmikikz@rambler.ru (L. Spivak). 0378-4754/$30.00 © 2004 IMACS. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.matcom.2004.06.018