Concern for environment hazards, plus the real or potential disasters they may prompt, is growing fast as populations and living standards rise. Fortunately, at the same time both the science and technology of space-based mapping and monitoring of our terrestrial environment are maturing fast. This book explores the principles and practices of environmental remote sensing, especially the techniques available for data processing, interpretation and analysis. The applicability of remotely sensed data to marine and coastal hazard monitoring and disaster assessment is described and discussed with special reference to problems endemic to he Mediterranean region, including earthquakes, vulcanicity, soil erosion and degradation, vegetation and crop damage, severe weather phenomena, marine conditions, and air and water pollution. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students, scientists and technical officers involved in environmental protection and management, and to national international relief agencies, both in the Mediterranean region itself and elsewhere.

Concern for environment hazards, plus the real or potential disasters they may prompt, is growing fast as populations and living standards rise. Fortunately, at the same time both the science and technology of space-based mapping and monitoring of our terrestrial environment are maturing fast. This book explores the principles and practices of environmental remote sensing, especially the techniques available for data processing, interpretation and analysis. The applicability of remotely sensed data to marine and coastal hazard monitoring and disaster assessment is described and discussed with special reference to problems endemic to he Mediterranean region, including earthquakes, vulcanicity, soil erosion and degradation, vegetation and crop damage, severe weather phenomena, marine conditions, and air and water pollution. This book will be of particular interest to graduate students, scientists and technical officers involved in environmental protection and management, and to national international relief agencies, both in the Mediterranean region itself and elsewhere.

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.

Remote sensing data and techniques have been widely used for disaster monitoring and assessment. In particular, recent advances in sensor technologies and artificial intelligence-based modeling are very promising for disaster monitoring and readying responses aimed at reducing the damage caused by disasters. This book contains eleven scientific papers that have studied novel approaches applied to a range of natural disasters such as forest fire, urban land subsidence, flood, and tropical cyclones.

Remote sensing data and techniques have been widely used for disaster monitoring and assessment. In particular, recent advances in sensor technologies and artificial intelligence-based modeling are very promising for disaster monitoring and readying responses aimed at reducing the damage caused by disasters. This book contains eleven scientific papers that have studied novel approaches applied to a range of natural disasters such as forest fire, urban land subsidence, flood, and tropical cyclones.

Geo-information technology can be of considerable use in disaster management, but with considerable challenge in integrating systems, interoperability and reliability. This book provides a broad overview of geo-information technology, software, systems needed, currently used and to be developed for disaster management. The text invites discussion on systems and requirements for use of geo-information under time and stress constraints and unfamiliar situations, environments and circumstances.