Application of Remote Sensing Technology to Reduce the Risk of Geological Disaster on Human Life

Dear Colleagues,

Remote-sensing data are advanced tools for geohazard mapping, monitoring, and prevention, as well as being an important support for risk management and reduction. They can be useful for understanding, and possibly anticipating, natural phenomena that, in their interaction with humans and inhabited areas, can produce disasters.

Geological processes create wonderful landscapes and impressive phenomena that attract people, but at the same time, they can be destructive and deadly. Some of them also impact high-density populated areas, forcing the inhabitants to find ways to mitigate the associated hazards. Volcanic eruptions can have even wider and global effects. Local effects, such as lava flows, earthquakes, floods, and landslides, can reach towns located around the area, forcing them to be evacuated. Considering the global scale, for example, during explosive eruptions, volcanic gas and ash are widely dispersed in the atmosphere over long distances, representing a hazard for aviation and contributing to climate changes. However, living in impressive locations at the foot of prominent mountains or of a volcano also has several advantages: naturalistic and geo-tourism is becoming popular, attracted by impressive landscapes and/or violent phenomena, increasing the number of hotels, restaurants, gift shops, and tour guides. The population can benefit from fertile soils, which improve the nutritional quality of field crops and of fruits and vegetables favored by abundant water or volcanic soil. Geothermal plants are abundant in volcanic areas and provide cheaper energy and improve the local economy. These are the reasons why volcanic and Piedmont territories are often very populated areas, which increases, in turn, the exposure to related hazards. On the other hand, prominent morphologies, usually characterizing impressive landscapes as well as active volcanoes, are associated with often violent and hazardous phenomena, related to the same active geodynamic processes generating the landscapes (i.e., earthquakes or eruptions) or related to the passive gravitational processes induced by the morphology itself and water (i.e., landslides and/or floods).

The study of ground deformations using InSAR and GNSS data, especially when combined, strongly contributes to the study of geomorphological, tectonic and volcanic processes. Volcanic processes, as well as the study of gaseous emissions produced by volcanoes, are also studied through the analysis of remote sensing thermal anomalies. Thermal sensors are now fundamental for the detection and mapping of wildfires and their impact on vegetation. Optical sensors are also used for the study and identification of heat islands in cities, as a consequence of climatic variations and extreme urbanization. The analysis of geomorphological processes is strongly supported by remote-sensing data such as high-resolution optical images, digital terrain models derived from laser or photogrammetric data (including satellite), change detection obtained from radar data, or from ground displacements measured using the InSAR technique.

This Special Issue will host contributions that give an updated overview of the progress in remote-sensing applications to geohazard detection and mitigation, from single to multi-disciplinary efforts, from the building scale to the regional scale.

We welcome contributions concerning:

• Landslides and subsidence mapping, activity definition, and susceptibility assessment;
• Volcano dynamics (e.g., unrest, eruption cycle, and volcano slope instabilities);
• Tectonic deformation;
• Co- and post-seismic ground motion;
• Flood detection and modeling;
• Man-made activity monitoring (mine activity, dam stability, quarries, gas storage, oil and gas production, or underground water extraction);
• Heat waves detection.

Dr. Alessandro Bonforte
Dr. Federico Di Traglia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• natural hazards
• risk mitigation
• risk prevention
• geological processes
• landscape evolution
• earth observation
• remote sensing
• synthetic aperture radar
• optical remote sensing
• LiDAR