Geospatial Methods and Tools for Natural Risk Management and Communications

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, there has been an increasing number of research projects focused on natural hazards (NHs) and climate change impacts, providing a variety of information to end users or to scientists working on related topics.  The special issue aims at promoting new and innovative studies, experiences, and models to improve risk management and communication about natural hazards to different end users.   End users such as decision and policy makers or the general public need information to be easily and quickly interpretable, properly contextualized, and therefore specifically tailored to their needs. On the other hand, scientists coming from different disciplines related to natural hazards and climate change (e.g., economists, sociologists) need more complete datasets to be integrated in their analysis. By facilitating data access and evaluation, as well as promoting open access to create a level playing field for non-funded scientists, data can be more readily used for scientific discovery and societal benefits. However, the new scientific advancements are not only represented by big/comprehensive datasets, geo-information and earth-observation architectures and services or new IT communication technologies (location-based tools, games, virtual and augmented reality technologies, and so on), but also by methods in order to communicate risk uncertainty as well as associated spatio-temporal dynamics, and involve stakeholders in risk management processes.

However, data and approaches are often fragmented across literature and among geospatial/natural hazard communities, with an evident lack of coherence. Furthermore, there is no unique approach of communicating information to the different audiences. Rather, several interdisciplinary techniques and efforts can be applied in order to simplify access to, evaluation of, and exploration of data.

This special issue encourages critical reflection on natural risk mitigation and communication practices, and provides an opportunity for geoscience communicators to share the best methods and tools in this field. Contributions are solicited that address these issues, and which have a clear objective and research methodology. Case studies and other experiences are also welcome, as long as they are rigorously presented and evaluated.

Dr. Raffaele Albano
Prof. Aurelia Sole
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 1900 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.