Multimodal Remote Sensing for Wildfires

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue invites submissions of extended and significantly revised versions of high-quality papers presented under the Community Contributed Theme “Advances in GeoAI Systems for Wildfire Monitoring” at the 46th International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS 2026). Additionally, this Special Issue warmly welcomes new and original contributions from researchers, practitioners, and industry experts whose work aligns with the thematic scope of remote sensing and GeoAI for wildfire studies, even if not presented at the conference.

With this Special Issue, we aim to advance research and innovation in the design, development, and deployment of remote sensing methods and intelligent geospatial systems for wildfire monitoring, prediction, and management. We seek to explore how Artificial Intelligence, multimodal data fusion, and geospatial analytics can transform wildfire science, from early risk estimations to real-time monitoring and post-fire assessments. By bridging advancements in remote sensing, computer vision, language models, and GIS integration, this Special Issue will provide a forum to address both theoretical foundations and practical applications in wildfire resilience.

Submissions may cover, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Development and benchmarking of open datasets and multimodal repositories for wildfire monitoring, environmental analysis, and GeoAI model evaluation.
• Computer vision and vision-language approaches for secondary remote sensing products such as land cover maps, vegetation indices, moisture and fuel load metrics, spread prediction maps, and post-fire change maps and damage assessments.
• Data fusion systems for multispectral, hyperspectral, LiDAR, and SAR remote sensing applied to forest and wildfire studies.
• Novel pipelines for 3D forest scene reconstruction using LiDAR, multi-view imagery, feed-forward 3D transformers, neural implicit models, and Gaussian Splatting.
• Advances in GeoAI systems with large language models and vision-language models for wildfire modeling and scene understanding.
• Integration of GeoAI and GIS, including ingestion of climate and weather data, and incorporation of predictive outputs into GIS-based decision systems.
• Case studies from global fire-prone regions showcasing operational GeoAI systems and policy-driven implementations.

Emphasis will be placed on works advancing remote sensing-driven GeoAI, including multimodal data fusion, vision–language integration, and GIS-based early warning systems. Studies that exploit data from different sensor modalities to enhance wildfire detection, progression modeling, and impact assessment are especially encouraged.

However, submissions are not restricted to these areas. Innovative contributions addressing data, algorithmic, and system-level challenges in wildfire intelligence and environmental monitoring are strongly encouraged, even if they extend beyond the direct scope of the original conference themes.

As wildfires continue to intensify under changing climate conditions, this Special Issue will provide a timely platform for disseminating cutting-edge remote sensing and GeoAI research. We seek to promote interdisciplinary collaboration between AI researchers, remote sensing experts, geospatial scientists, and policymakers fostering technologies that integrate advanced sensing, data analytics, and decision support to strengthen environmental resilience at regional and global scales.

Dr. Kyle Gao
Dr. Linlin Xu
Dr. Liangzhi Li
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• remote sensing
• wildfire monitoring
• GeoAI
• data fusion
• 3D reconstruction
• large language models
• vision language models
• GIS
• environmental monitoring
• disaster management