Urban Flood Observations (UFO)

Chip-level dataset for binary surface-water segmentation over urban flood scenes, derived from PlanetScope imagery.

Contents

ufo-benchmark/
├── README.md
├── stac/
│   ├── catalog.json
│   ├── collection.json
│   ├── items/                 # 215 STAC Items, one per chip
│   ├── scene_metadata/        # 61 per-scene Planet metadata files
│   └── scene_index.json
└── urbanFloodsObservationsPUBLIC/
    ├── PS_uint8/              # 215 four-band (B,G,R,NIR) uint8 GeoTIFFs, 1024x1024
    └── labels/                # 215 single-band uint8 GeoTIFFs, 1024x1024

Item / file convention

Each chip is named:

LOC_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_STRIP_CHIP.tif

Where:

• LOC: three-letter location code (e.g., BEI, BNA, CMO, HTX, SPS)

• YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_STRIP: source Planet scene identifier (date, time, strip ID)

• CHIP: four-character hash uniquely identifying the chip within the scene

Image and label files share identical filenames.

The chip filename preserves the original extraction naming convention. For a small number of scenes, the Planet scene ID includes an additional suffix. In these cases:

• The STAC property ufo:scene_id

• The filename in scene_metadata/*.json

contain the exact resolved scene ID.

Label convention

Label rasters are single-band uint8:

Per-chip label statistics (water pixel count, total pixel count, water fraction) are stored in each STAC Item under ufo:label_* properties.

Imagery convention

• Source: PlanetScope (PSScene item type)

• Bands: Blue, Green, Red, NIR

• Pixel type: uint8

• Spatial size: 1024 × 1024 pixels

• Resolution: original scene GSD

Note:

Planet Labs PBC granted permission to redistribute uint8-converted imagery alongside labels. These are not original surface reflectance products.

STAC catalog

The dataset follows STAC 1.0.0 with the following extensions:

• eo

• projection

• raster

• view

• label

Validated using pystac.

Structure:

• stac/catalog.json: root catalog

• stac/collection.json: collection metadata including spatial/temporal extent, providers, and summaries

• stac/items/*.json: one STAC Item per chip with image/label assets and metadata

• stac/scene_metadata/*.json: per-scene metadata (61 scenes)

• stac/scene_index.json: mapping between scenes and chips

Planet metadata redistribution

Only the following fields are included (per agreement with Planet Labs PBC):

• acquired (acquisition datetime)

• geometry (scene footprint, EPSG:4326)

• instrument

• cloud_cover

• sun_elevation

• gsd (ground sample distance)

• quality_category (e.g., standard, test)

License

• Labels, STAC metadata, derived statistics, and redistributed imagery: CC-BY-4.0

• PlanetScope imagery note: distributed imagery consists of uint8-converted products prepared for this dataset release, not original reflectance values. Redistribution is explicitly permitted by Planet Labs PBC.

Citation

Urban Flood Observations dataset (UFO). Zenodo.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15238470

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Simone Holliday, Patrick Hellmann, Natasha Rapp, and Linn Ji for their assistance with labeling. 

Funding

The creation of the UFO dataset was supported by a NASA Terrestrial Hydrology Program grant (\#80NSSC21K1044).