This book presents ongoing research and ideas related to earth observations and global change, natural hazards and disaster management studies, with respect to geospatial information technology, remote sensing, and global navigation satellite systems. Readers will discover uses of advanced geospatial tools, spatiotemporal models, and earth observation systems. Chapters identify the international aspects of the coupled social, land and climate systems in global change studies, and consider such global challenges as agriculture monitoring, the smart city, and risk assessment. The work presented here has been carefully selected, edited, and peer reviewed in order to advance research and development, as well as to encourage innovative applications of Geomatics technologies in global change studies. The book will appeal not only to academicians, but also to professionals, politicians and decision makers who wish to learn from the very latest and most innovative, quality research in this area of global change and natural disaster management. /divContributions are drawn from revised submissions based on state-of-the-art papers from the 7th GiT4NDM - 5th EOGC, 2015 event.

Geospatial Technologies and Climate Change describes various approaches from different countries on how to use geospatial technologies to help solving climate change issues. It also details how different geospatial technologies (remote sensing, Geographical Information System...) can be used to help with climate monitoring and modeling, how to work with them and what to be careful about. This book is written by scientific experts from four different continents. Written in a comprehensive and complete way, this book is essential reading material for graduate and undergraduate students interested in these techniques and in climate change.

In the past few years the United States has experienced a series of disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which have severely taxed and in many cases overwhelmed responding agencies. In all aspects of emergency management, geospatial data and tools have the potential to help save lives, limit damage, and reduce the costs of dealing with emergencies. Great strides have been made in the past four decades in the development of geospatial data and tools that describe locations of objects on the Earth's surface and make it possible for anyone with access to the Internet to witness the magnitude of a disaster. However, the effectiveness of any technology is as much about the human systems in which it is embedded as about the technology itself. Successful Response Starts with a Map assesses the status of the use of geospatial data, tools, and infrastructure in disaster management, and recommends ways to increase and improve their use. This book explores emergency planning and response; how geospatial data and tools are currently being used in this field; the current policies that govern their use; various issues related to data accessibility and security; training; and funding. Successful Response Starts with a Map recommends significant investments be made in training of personnel, coordination among agencies, sharing of data and tools, planning and preparedness, and the tools themselves.

Remote sensing is the acquisition of information of an object or phenomenon, by the use of either recording or real-time sensing device(s), that is not in physical or intimate contact with the object (such as by way of aircraft, spacecraft, satellite, buoy, or ship). In practice, remote sensing is the stand-off collection through the use of a variety of devices for gathering information on a given object or area. Human existence is dependent on our ability to understand, utilize, manage and maintain the environment we live in - Geoscience is the science that seeks to achieve these goals. This book is a collection of contributions from world-class scientists, engineers and educators engaged in the fields of geoscience and remote sensing.

Lessons learned in the last several years have given clear indications that the prediction and efficient monitoring of disasters is one of the critical factors in decision-making process. In this respect space-based technologies have the great potential of supplying information in near real time. Earth observation satellites have already demonstrated their flexibility in providing data to a wide range of applications: weather forecasting, person and vehicle tracking, alerting to disaster, forest fire and flood monitoring, oil spills, spread of desertification, monitoring of crop and forestry damages. This book focuses on a wider utilisation of remote sensing in disaster management. The discussed aspects comprise data access/delivery to the users, information extraction and analysis, management of data and its integration with other data sources (airborne and terrestrial imagery, GIS data, etc.), data standardization, organisational and legal aspects of sharing remote sensing information.

Climate change not only involves rising temperatures but it can also alter the hydro-meteorological parameters of a region and the corresponding changes emerging in the various biotic or abiotic environmental features. One of the results of climate change has been the impact on the sediment yield and its transport. These changes have implications for various other environmental components, particularly soils, water bodies, water quality, land productivity, sedimentation processes, glacier dynamics, and risk management strategies to name a few. This volume presents a diverse collection of case studies from researchers across the globe examining the impacts of climate change on river basin management in various geographical, hydrological, and socioeconomic contexts. The case studies yield important insights that can inform strategies to build resilience and adapt river basins to a changing climate.

This volume constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the First IFIP TC 5 DCDRR International Conference on Information Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction, ITDRR 2016, held in Sofia, Bulgaria, in November 2016. The 20 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 52 submissions. The papers focus on various aspects and challenges of coping with disaster risk reduction. The main topics include areas such as big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, natural disasters, mobile computing, emergency management, disaster information processing, disaster risk assessment and management, and disaster management simulation.