Wetlands play a significant role in flood mitigation. Remote sensing technologies as an efficient and accurate approach have been widely applied to delineate wetlands. Supervised classification is conventionally applied for remote sensing technologies to improve the wetland delineation accuracy. However, performing supervised classification requires preparing the training data, which is also considered time-consuming and prone to human mistakes. This paper presents a deterministic topographic wetland index to delineate wetland inundation areas without performing supervised classification. The classic methods such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, Normalized Difference Water Index, and Topographic Wetness Index were chosen to compare with the proposed deterministic topographic method on wetland delineation accuracy. The ground truth sample points validated by Google satellite imageries from four different years were used for the assessment of the delineation overall accuracy. The results show that the proposed deterministic topographic wetland index has the highest overall accuracy (98.90%) and Kappa coefficient (0.641) among the selected approaches in this study. The findings of this paper will provide an alternative approach for delineating wetlands rapidly by using solely the LiDAR-derived Digital Elevation Model.

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The early release from wetlands and shallow ponds could provide extra water storage during heavy rainfall, thus mitigating floods. In this paper, a remotely operated integrated siphon system intended to release water from wetlands/shallow ponds ahead of (a few hours or a few days before) a heavy rainfall that is forecasted to produce flooding is proposed. Siphons work under the pull of gravity and are limited to pond berm heights below about 6 m. An array (e.g. hundreds) of the proposed siphon system can be controlled remotely by an operator or by a Decision Support System. A self-operating and remotely controlled siphon system could open the doors for managing wetlands and shallow ponds for multiple purposes, including flood control and improvement of aquatic habitat. Laboratory tests using 4 and 15 cm-diameter siphons were performed in this study. The results showed that the integrated control system is technically feasible and economically viable. INDEX TERMS Flood mitigation, remote control, smart wetland, water storage management system.

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