Near and Remote Sensing for Integrated Monitoring of Instability Processes

Dear Colleagues,

The use of appropriate technologies for monitoring environmental phenomena is of paramount importance in reducing disaster risk and territorial planning and managing. There are many available techniques (from geotechnics, geophysics, and remote sensing), and the selection of the most appropriate, or of the combination of different techniques, depends on multiple factors. The wide availability and reduced cost of some types of sensors (e.g Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR), Acoustic Emission, Laser, Inclinometers, GNSS receivers, etc), the greater availability of data, and the possibility of sharing in real time (also thanks to cloud technology), determine a convenience to the integration of near and remote techniques of detection and monitoring of instability processes. However, this integration still poses issues and assessments worthwhile of further investigations. For instance, among remote sensing techniques, SAR Interferometry (InSAR) technology allows identifying displacement signals valuable for monitoring both ground and structural stability (subsidence, landslides, transport networks, buildings, dams, etc.). However, a gap still exists between the InSAR products and their interpretation in terms of geotechnical and structural modelling and, in order to provide a real practical support to monitor ground and structural instabilities, this remote sensing technique should be combined with in situ monitoring networks and modelling tools. In this framework, several issues still remain open:

• optimal combination of remote sensing data, in situ measurements, user interactions, and geotechnical models;
• requirements of remote sensing data defined according to the applications in terms of time scale, spatial scale, and platforms (space-borne, aerial, UAV, ground based);
• validation experiments aimed at proving the integration of different techniques;
• finalization of the resulting information in the direction of problem solving: process monitoring, alerts, early warning, automation and optimization of operational choices.

This special issue is aimed at addressing all these themes though examples of algorithm development and application to case studies.

Dr. Fabio Bovenga
Dr. Roberta Pellicani
Prof. Giuseppe Spilotro
Guest Editors

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• Instability monitoring
• Integrated analysis
• In-situ sensors
• Remote sensing
• Geotechnical modelling
• Subsidence
• Landslides
• Sinkholes
• Underground cavities
• Infrastructure monitoring
• Structural monitoring