In early November, heavy rainfalls lasting for a whole week led to devastating floods in the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas, displacing about one million people and appoximately half of Tabasco's overall population. About 80% of the state of Tabasco's surface (overall area: 25,000 km²) has been temporarily flooded. The region around the city of Villahermosa with its population of approx. 600.000 was hit most by the floods.

The Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information (ZKI) of DLR supports the Mexican civil protection (CENAPRED) with satellite image maps of the floods. The DLR radar satellite TerraSAR-X, which was launched in June 2007 and is still in its commissioning phase, proves to be highly suitable for the assessment of flood events again. Independently from cloud cover or daytime, TerraSAR-X ist able to deliver high resolution imagery with a resolution of up to one meter. In this case, the data aquisition could be accelerated significantly by using TerraSAR-X's unique left looking recording ability.

		ZKI satellite image maps: Floods in Tabasco (Mexico) November 8, 2007 - 19:40 UTC The maps of ZKI show the State of Tabasco's capital Villahermosa and its surroundings at a scale from 1:15,000 to 1:100,000. The TerraSAR-X images used in the maps have a resolution of 3m (Stripmap Mode) and 16m (ScanSAR Mode).  More ...