Flood disasters are recurrent in Nepal leading to huge loss of lives, infrastructure damage and adverse impacts on socioeconomic development. An important approach to non-structural flood management lies in the provision of an end-to-end flood forecasting and warning services. Due to the limited spatial coverage of ground based gauges, unavailability of real-time rainfall data, and constraint in technical and financial resources, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) of Nepal is yet to initiate an operational flood forecasting. The availability of global coverage of satellite data offer effective and economical means of calculating areal rainfall estimates in sparsely gauged areas. Thus, satellite-based rainfall estimates (SRE) may be one of the best and appropriate approaches for Nepal to predict and forecast rainfall-induced runoff that may produce flooding.
