Microwave Remote Sensing and Applications: New Challenges of the Earth Observation (EO) Technology for the Building of a More Resilient Society to Natural Disasters

Dear Colleagues,

The exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) methodologies, based on the use of instruments operating at the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum, presently represents a common practice in the scientific community. The development of new remote sensing techniques as well as the consolidation of the well-established ones is currently favored by the increasing amount of EO data collected by several sensors mounted onboard to space and/or aerial vectors that have been emerging over recent years. New added-value products, based on the processing of such large amount of data by means of innovative high-computing paradigms, are expected to be put in place to afford the emerging demands of the society, in terms of monitoring and protection of the natural heritage. In this framework, integrated approaches based on the use of radar data at different wavelengths, also potentially complemented with multispectral data collected in the optical/infrared bands, may help in having new information on the state of the Earth’s environment, including the Earth’s surface, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the coastal regions. Among others, the new challenges of the society where EO technologies may give an essential contribution are those connected to the enhancement of the social resilience to natural and human-induced disasters, the detection and prevention of risks conditions for the population, and the study of the atmosphere and ocean current mechanisms.

This Special Issue is open to all researchers. Papers are solicited on the following general themes:

- The exploitation of the existing and planned EO missions to perform extended investigations of the Earth’s environment changes;

- Microwave remote sensing applications: New instruments and acquisition modes;

- Advances of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) technologies, with an emphasis on: (i) the methods for the estimation of the atmospheric disturbances in InSAR interferograms, (ii) the measurement of the soil moisture, (iii) the use of full-pol SAR/InSAR data, and (iv) the coherent change detection;

- The potential of new-generation SAR instruments onboard principal spaceborne platforms: the Sentinel constellation of the European Union, the COSMO-SkyMed constellations of the Italian Space Agency, the ALOS-2 mission of the Japanese Space Agency, the TerraSAR-X constellation operated by DLR, and the Argentinian SAOCOM sensor’s constellation;

- High Performance Computing (HPC) InSAR/SAR data processing;

- Study of the Earth’s atmosphere and the ocean’s currents;

- Study of the climate change and the sea-level-rise in coastal regions;

- Exploitation of EO data for the building of a more resilient society to natural and human-induced disasters;

- Geophysical Investigations in areas subjected to natural disasters: the role of current and forthcoming EO missions;

- Integration of information provided through space-, aerial-, and terrestrial-based EO data systems;

- Use of radar instruments for exploration of the Solar system bodies.

Dr. Antonio Pepe
Guest Editor

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