Remote Sensing in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Second Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

Civil engineering structures are vital assets to human life in terms of the economy, mobility, the environment, and the development of communities. There is no doubt that assets should be maintained and cared for as part of a robust, planned monitoring and maintenance programme within the context of the life cycle of structures and their interaction with the environment. It is imperative that any adopted assessment and monitoring methods should be cost-effective, efficient, and fit for purpose. Depending on the type and needs of the infrastructure, different approaches should be used to generate useful information for long-term sustainability. In this framework, remote sensing technologies have been proven to be instrumental in providing vital information about structures’ performance and behaviour, as well as environmental changes. Their applications are numerous and currently include the structural health monitoring of civil infrastructure systems (buildings, bridges, roads, railways, and airfields), the excavation and tunnelling-induced settlements of buildings, preventive archaeology, natural hazards, and hydrology and water resources. On the other hand, the number of remote sensing applications for environmental monitoring and conservation ecology is currently growing , and they mainly relate to the monitoring of vegetation, biomass, forest carbon, erosive processes, and pollution.

This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art applications and numerical, theoretical, and industrial developments of remote sensing technologies and methods in the civil and environmental engineering areas of science.

The following are areas of interest and priority for this Special Issue:     

• Platforms (ground-borne, space-borne, and air-borne);
• Orbit types (geo-synchronous and sun-synchronous);
• Sensor types and systems (active/passive sensors, framing/scanning systems, and multi-spectral imaging/thermal remote sensing/microwave radar sensing systems);
• Advanced image processing (data fusion and integration of multi-sensor data, image segmentation and classification algorithms, feature selection algorithms, change detection and multi-temporal analysis, and geographic object-based image analysis);
• Enhanced data analysis and interpretation methods (machine learning and deep learning techniques for time-series analysis and forecasting models of deformations);
• The integration of remote sensing data into GIS;
• Technology and data-driven integration between remote sensing and non-destructive testing methods (e.g., ground penetrating radar, laser scanning, deflection-based methods, and infrared thermography);
• The development of fully deployed and prototype remote sensing hardware and software;
• New satellite missions and downstream applications;
• The contribution of remote sensing to the development of new standards, policies, and best practices.

Prof. Dr. Fabio Tosti
Prof. Dr. Andrea Benedetto
Dr. Deodato Tapete
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. Remote Sensing 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 2700 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.

• civil and environmental engineering
• ground-borne, space-borne, and air-borne remote sensing platforms
• infrastructure monitoring and preventive archaeology
• hydrology and water resources
• natural hazards
• environmental monitoring and conservation ecology
• enhanced image processing, data analysis, and interpretation methods
• remote sensing technology and data-driven integration with NDTs
• remote sensing and GIS
• new satellite missions and downstream applications

• Remote Sensing in Civil and Environmental Engineering in Remote Sensing (9 articles)