Sensing Disaster


Book Description

In 2007, a three-story-high tsunami slammed the small island of Simbo in the western Solomon Islands. Drawing on over ten years of research, Matthew Lauer provides a vivid and intimate account of this calamitous event and the tumultuous recovery process. His stimulating analysis surveys the unpredictable entanglements of the powerful waves with colonization, capitalism, human-animal communication, spirit beings, ancestral territory, and technoscientific expertise that shaped the disaster’s outcomes. Although the Simbo people had never experienced another tsunami in their lifetimes, nearly everyone fled to safety before the destructive waves hit. To understand their astonishing response, Lauer argues that we need to rethink popular and scholarly portrayals of Indigenous knowledge to avert epistemic imperialism and improve disaster preparedness strategies. In an increasingly disaster-prone era of ecological crises, this provocative book brings new possibilities into view for understanding the causes and consequences of calamity, the unintended effects of humanitarian recovery and mitigation efforts, and the nature of local knowledge.




Remote Sensing and GIS Technologies for Monitoring and Prediction of Disasters


Book Description

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 of Water Resources, Disasters, and Urban Studies


Book Description

This book is the most comprehensive documentation of the scientific and methodological advances that have taken place in understanding remote sensing data, methods, and applications over last 50 years. In a very practical way it demonstrates the experience, utility, methods and models used in studying a wide array of water applications. There are more than 100 leading global experts in the field contributing to this work.




Social Sensing and Big Data Computing for Disaster Management


Book Description

Social Sensing and Big Data Computing for Disaster Management captures recent advancements in leveraging social sensing and big data computing for supporting disaster management. Specifically, analysed within this book are some of the promises and pitfalls of social sensing data for disaster relevant information extraction, impact area assessment, population mapping, occurrence patterns, geographical disparities in social media use, and inclusion in larger decision support systems. Traditional data collection methods such as remote sensing and field surveying often fail to offer timely information during or immediately following disaster events. Social sensing enables all citizens to become part of a large sensor network which is low cost, more comprehensive, and always broadcasting situational awareness information. However, data collected with social sensing is often massive, heterogeneous, noisy, and unreliable in some aspects. It comes in continuous streams, and often lacks geospatial reference information. Together, these issues represent a grand challenge toward fully leveraging social sensing for emergency management decision making under extreme duress. Meanwhile, big data computing methods and technologies such as high-performance computing, deep learning, and multi-source data fusion become critical components of using social sensing to understand the impact of and response to the disaster events in a timely fashion. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Digital Earth.




Advances in Remote Sensing-based Disaster Monitoring and Assessment


Book Description

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.




An Introduction to Applying Satellite Remote Sensing to Disaster Management


Book Description

This study on the application of satellite remote sensing in disaster management is unique in the sense that it is based on 13 years of empirical study, takes human factors (users) into account. It provides an overview of satellite remote sensing, detailing how it works and for what fields of disaster management it can be used. This book will particularly appeal to practitioners (such as disaster responders, policy makers, and administrative officials) and researchers in the field of disaster management, as well as researchers in the satellite-remote-sensing field.




Remote Sensing Handbook - Three Volume Set


Book Description

A volume in the three-volume Remote Sensing Handbook series, Remote Sensing of Water Resources, Disasters, and Urban Studies documents the scientific and methodological advances that have taken place during the last 50 years. The other two volumes in the series are Remotely Sensed Data Characterization, Classification, and Accuracies, and Land Reso




A Holistic Case-Study Approach to Applying Satellite Remote Sensing to Disaster Management


Book Description

This book brings together a number of holistic case-studies focusing on the application of satellite remote sensing to disaster management. It highlights the human factors behind such application, and explores the various fields in which it can be used.




Remote Sensing for Hazard Monitoring and Disaster Assessment


Book Description

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.




Large-Scale Disasters


Book Description

'Extreme' events - including climatic events, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, drought - can cause massive disruption to society, including large death tolls and property damage in the billions of dollars. Events in recent years have shown the importance of being prepared and that countries need to work together to help alleviate the resulting pain and suffering. This volume presents an integrated review of the broad research field of large-scale disasters. It establishes a common framework for predicting, controlling and managing both manmade and natural disasters. There is a particular focus on events caused by weather and climate change. Other topics include air pollution, tsunamis, disaster modeling, the use of remote sensing and the logistics of disaster management. It will appeal to scientists, engineers, first responders and health-care professionals, in addition to graduate students and researchers who have an interest in the prediction, prevention or mitigation of large-scale disasters.