Analysing Operational Aspects of River Ice Monitoring with Earth Observation for Flood Early Warning in Canada

River ice jams are a major contributor to flood risk in cold regions. Satellite remote sensing (i.e. earth observation) is used across Canada to provide timely information on the status of river ice. Methods and algorithms to classify various stages of river ice from the Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) are available, but the operational implementation of these, especially the integration into larger flood forecasting and early warning systems, requires specific expertise, software and computational resources. We describe the setup designed and employed operationally for the relevant agencies of Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Yukon in Canada, as well as a framework to analyse various factors relevant for operational monitoring purposes. This includes the spatiotemporal coverage of the data and the timeliness (latency) with which these become available, critical elements in the support of decision-making relating to floods. This analysis reveals that while most images have a relatively low latency, often well below the 2 hour threshold expected for images relating to disaster management purposes, there is also a large variation across time and space, with images also exceeding this threshold. This should be considered in the design and operations of monitoring systems, to ensure all relevant imagery is included.