Special Issue "Sensors for Disaster and Emergency Management Decision Making"

Guest Editor
Dr. Yang Gao
Department of Geomatics Engineering Schulich School of Engineering, The University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada
E-Mail:
Interests: satellite navigation; multi-sensor system; integration of GNSS, GIS and wireless communication systems; natural hazards monitoring

Guest Editor
Dr. Jason K. Levy
Homeland Security, National Homeland Security Project, L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University, 923 W. Franklin St., Box 842028, Richmond, VA 23284, USA
Website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jlevy/mug.html
E-Mail:
Interests: emergency management; risk assessment; natural hazards; geomatics engineering; chemical sensors

The current generation of remote sensors provide new opportunities for the real-time analysis and management of disaster risks. For example, by providing reliable, detailed, cost-effective, continuous, and synoptic coverage of natural and anthrropogenic phenomena, remote sensing satellites are capable of answering important disaster and emergency management questions, such as: How do human pressures (ie. land use and landcover change) affect disaster risk? How to reconstruct the historical record of previous extreme events? How do global weather patterns impact climate variability and change? Moreover, advances in real-time data acquisition and hardware/software integration have increasingly been used to improve the monitoring and control of emergency vehicles with fixed or moving sensors. Accordingly, this special issue encourages papers on the use of fully integrated, inexpensive sensor systems suitable for mobile emergency asset management. Finally, the issue will emphasize use of the "Sensor Web" (a distributed global web of sensors for information sharing among networked platforms) for hazard monitoring and emergency management applications (e.g. flood detection, critical infrastructure protection, etc). Research contributions dealing with web sensor architecture design and field deployment for system interoperability and scalability are particularly welcome.

Disaster Management, Wireless Sensors, Remote Sensing, Emergency Planning, Sensor Web, Hazard Mitigation, Mobile Asset Emergency Management, Sensor Network