Compilation of data used to implement floodplain DEM algorithm in the Logone Floodplain

This document describes the dataset that was used in the article submitted to Geophysical Research Letters by Shastry and Durand entitled "Water Surface Elevation Constraints in a Data Assimilation Scheme to Infer Floodplain Topography: A Case Study in the Logone Floodplain". The dataset is distributed as a NetCDF file containing the Digital Elevation Models at different stages of the algorithm described in the article, and a set of excel files describing the location coordinates of flood boundaries used in the study.

Description of Files

Excel files
Each excel file provides the location coordinates of flood boundaries on a particular day; the date is mentioned in the file name as YYYYMMDD. Each Sheet is each excel file corresponds to a unique flooded region on the particular day. The first column corresponds to Northing and the second Easting. The coordinates are in the WGS 1984 UTM Zone 33 N coordinate system.  

NetCDF file
This file contains Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) at various stages of the algorithm. The various stages are described below.
1. The Prior DEM: Multi-Error-Removed Improved-Terrain (MERIT) DEM (Yamazaki et al., 2017; http://hydro.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~yamadai/MERIT_DEM/) of the Logone Floodplain in Cameroon upscaled to 500 m.
2. Ensemble of particle DEMs: Spatially correlated errors added to the prior DEM to produce an ensemble of 50 particles.
3. Channel smoothed ensemble of particles: The elevations of the river network smoothed in the ensemble of particles in 2.
4. Flood boundary smoothed ensemble of particles: The elevations along flood boundaries provided in the excel files smoothed in the ensemble mentioned in 3.
5. Water surface constrained ensemble: A water surface constraint is applied to the ensemble in 4 to produce the ensemble that goes into the particle batch smoother described in the article.

Reference:

Yamazaki, D., Ikeshima, D., Tawatari, R., Yamaguchi, T., O’Loughlin, F., Neal, J. C., Bates, P. D. (2017). A high-accuracy map of global terrain elevations. Geophysical Research Letters, 44 (11), 5844–5853. doi: 10.1002/2017GL072874