Flood-LDM: Generalizable Latent Diffusion Models for rapid and accurate zero-shot High-Resolution Flood Mapping

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Neo, Sun Han, Seneviratne, Sachith, Herath, Herath Mudiyanselage Viraj Vidura, Saha, Abhishek, Rasnayaka, Sanka, Marshall, Lucy Amanda
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Neo, Sun Han
Seneviratne, Sachith
Herath, Herath Mudiyanselage Viraj Vidura
Saha, Abhishek
Rasnayaka, Sanka
Marshall, Lucy Amanda
author_facet Neo, Sun Han
Seneviratne, Sachith
Herath, Herath Mudiyanselage Viraj Vidura
Saha, Abhishek
Rasnayaka, Sanka
Marshall, Lucy Amanda
contents Flood prediction is critical for emergency planning and response to mitigate human and economic losses. Traditional physics-based hydrodynamic models generate high-resolution flood maps using numerical methods requiring fine-grid discretization; which are computationally intensive and impractical for real-time large-scale applications. While recent studies have applied convolutional neural networks for flood map super-resolution with good accuracy and speed, they suffer from limited generalizability to unseen areas. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that leverages latent diffusion models to perform super-resolution on coarse-grid flood maps, with the objective of achieving the accuracy of fine-grid flood maps while significantly reducing inference time. Experimental results demonstrate that latent diffusion models substantially decrease the computational time required to produce high-fidelity flood maps without compromising on accuracy, enabling their use in real-time flood risk management. Moreover, diffusion models exhibit superior generalizability across different physical locations, with transfer learning further accelerating adaptation to new geographic regions. Our approach also incorporates physics-informed inputs, addressing the common limitation of black-box behavior in machine learning, thereby enhancing interpretability. Code is available at https://github.com/neosunhan/flood-diff.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_14033
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Flood-LDM: Generalizable Latent Diffusion Models for rapid and accurate zero-shot High-Resolution Flood Mapping
Neo, Sun Han
Seneviratne, Sachith
Herath, Herath Mudiyanselage Viraj Vidura
Saha, Abhishek
Rasnayaka, Sanka
Marshall, Lucy Amanda
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Flood prediction is critical for emergency planning and response to mitigate human and economic losses. Traditional physics-based hydrodynamic models generate high-resolution flood maps using numerical methods requiring fine-grid discretization; which are computationally intensive and impractical for real-time large-scale applications. While recent studies have applied convolutional neural networks for flood map super-resolution with good accuracy and speed, they suffer from limited generalizability to unseen areas. In this paper, we propose a novel approach that leverages latent diffusion models to perform super-resolution on coarse-grid flood maps, with the objective of achieving the accuracy of fine-grid flood maps while significantly reducing inference time. Experimental results demonstrate that latent diffusion models substantially decrease the computational time required to produce high-fidelity flood maps without compromising on accuracy, enabling their use in real-time flood risk management. Moreover, diffusion models exhibit superior generalizability across different physical locations, with transfer learning further accelerating adaptation to new geographic regions. Our approach also incorporates physics-informed inputs, addressing the common limitation of black-box behavior in machine learning, thereby enhancing interpretability. Code is available at https://github.com/neosunhan/flood-diff.
title Flood-LDM: Generalizable Latent Diffusion Models for rapid and accurate zero-shot High-Resolution Flood Mapping
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.14033