Advancing Data for Street-Level Flood Vulnerability: Evaluation of Variables Extracted from Google Street View in Quito, Ecuador

Data relevant to flood vulnerability is minimal and infrequently collected, if at all, for much of the world. This makes it difficult to highlight areas for humanitarian aid, monitor changes, and support communities in need. It is time consuming and resource intensive to do an exhaustive study for multiple flood relevant vulnerability variables using a field survey. We use a mixed methods approach to develop a survey on variables of interest and utilize an open-source crowdsourcing technique to remotely collect data with a human-machine interface using high-resolution satellite images and Google Street View. Finally, we perform an inter-rater agreement to assess if this technique provides consistent results. This paper focuses on Quito, Ecuador as a case study, but the methodology can be replicated to produce labeled training data in other areas. The overall goal is to advance methods to help build training datasets that allow for assessing and automating the mapping of flood vulnerability for urban areas.