SCOFrance

Partners

France: UMR Espace-Dev, IRD, CNES
Indian Ocean: BNGRC, Université de la Réunion, IOGA, IST

KeywordsMadagascar, cyclone, impacts, location, trajectory, prevention, warning

Cimopolée fully operational

Published on 09/09/2025

In 24 months, the Cimopolée project has implemented the eponymous platform, which tracks cyclones in the Indian Ocean in real time and quantifies their impacts. Integrated into Madagascar's risk management application, it enables authorities to take preventive action and analyze damage. The tool and its code are open source.

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Cimopolée home interface, which provides information derived from satellite data without requiring knowledge of image acquisition or processing. © Cimopolée

In the Indian Ocean, Madagascar experiences 3 to 4 major cyclones a year. On this immense island, where travel and communication are not easy, local authorities need precise information as soon as possible to analyze the situation and prepare for intervention in the affected areas.

Today, the Cimopolée web application, co-constructed with the project's Madagascan partners, enables them to visualize:

The real-time presence (trajectory and intensity) of a cyclone in the Indian Ocean zone;

A general and quantified contextualization of Madagascar in the face of historical cyclones (districts hardest hit, rainiest, areas flooded, links with the population, etc.).

Hosting the tool on SEAS-OI's server in La Réunion facilitates data flow and connection for BNGRC, Madagascar's risk management unit based in Tananarive. "When a cyclone arrives, this unit will alert its agents in the field to warn the population and deploy actions according to the risks envisaged. Cimopolée supports this system by providing additional precise information, in particular the location of the cyclone's passage and the population basin that will be affected," explains Christophe Revillion, project manager at UMR Espace-Dev.

► Example of flood mapping following cyclone Freddy in February 2023. Flooded areas, in purple, are located and quantified by change detection on Sentinel-1 images before and after the cyclone . © Cimopolée

🖱️ Go to Cimopolée

Behind the simple interface, the algorithms

To achieve this result, the automatic processing chains developed during the project mobilize Sentinel-1 and 2 satellite data, as well as meteorological and contextual data (population database, location of inhabited areas, etc.).

👉 The tool is entirely open source, including the algorithmic code, which is available on UMR Espace-Dev's Git.

"Today, Cimopolée is fully operational, and we are responsible for its maintenance and updating. In the event of a major cyclone, we'll be "on deck" alongside the BNGRC to see if and how the information fits in perfectly with their risk management process," assures Christophe Revillion.

View project details

SCO synergies in prospect

Although the project does not call for any official follow-up since the tool is already operational, it does offer strong synergies with other SCO projects, particularly CASCADES. The latter, which is just getting underway, will set up processing chains to generate maps of the extent of water zones based on Sentinel-1 and 2 data. “Madagascar is a privileged field of application for this, and the data could be fed into Cimopolée, ideally as a continuation of the partnership with IOGA and BNGRC", hopes Christophe Revillion.

Other synergies are on the table with MangMap, and all these project leaders are in serious discussions to move forward together. Let's bet they'll have something to announce before the end of the year...!