Acquisition and Reliability of Geospatial Data from UAV Platforms for Environmental Management and Monitoring

Dear Colleagues,

The use of UAVs today represents an advanced geospatial data acquisition strategy that enables the effective mapping of land and infrastructure. Thanks to the possibility of reaching inaccessible places and flying at varying altitudes, surveying from UAVs allows detailed and up-to-date data to be collected efficiently and accurately. In this way, it is possible to investigate the different phenomena that characterize the environment and to reconstruct a multi-level overview of the surveyed object. Furthermore, these devices can be equipped with a wide range of sensors that enable them to acquire different types of information. The most common sensors include high-resolution cameras, thermal sensors, LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), multi-spectral sensors and environmental monitoring sensors. By integrating data from these different sensors, it is possible to obtain a complete and detailed view of the investigated area, facilitating spatial planning, natural resource management, environmental and structural monitoring, and many other applications.

The aim of this Special Issue is to collect new research topics developed not only on the three-dimensional representation and processing of datasets acquired from UAV platforms, but also on the use of specific algorithms for the automatic extraction of features, evaluating the accuracy and detail of the products obtained. Furthermore, this SI aims to analyze possible applications in the field of structural analysis, as well as in environmental management and protection, focusing on the processing, integration and interpretation of data from multi-sensor platforms in order to obtain accurate and meaningful results.

Articles may cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

- Mapping through photogrammetry from UAVs;
- Innovative techniques for 3D reconstruction of land structures and infrastructures;
- Innovative sensors and tools for 3D data acquisition;
- AI algorithms applied to UAV images;
- Image classification, feature extraction and change detection;
- Data processing and multi-sensor data fusion;
- Urban monitoring applications;
- Environmental and/or structural monitoring through UAVs;
- Multi-spectral and thermal imagery from UAVs for disaster prevention and monitoring.

We are looking forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Domenica Costantino
Dr. Vincenzo Saverio Alfio
Prof. Dr. Massimiliano Pepe
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• UAV platforms
• geospatial data
• UAVs with LiDAR
• feature extraction
• change detection
• 3D reconstruction
• artificial intelligence