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Intelligent Methods and Deep Learning Advances with Multimodal Remote Sensing Data for Environmental Hazard Applications

A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Remote Sensing Image Processing".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 1181

Special Issue Editors

College of Geological Engineering and Geomatics, Chang'an University, Xi'an 710054, China
Interests: remote sensing data intelligent processing; machine learning; intelligent identification of geological hazards

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Guest Editor
College of Geological Engineering and Geomatics, Chang'an University, Xi'an 710054, China
Interests: low-altitude UAV photogrammetry; combined camera data preprocessing
China Aero Geophysical Survey and Remote Sensing Center for Natural Resources, Beijing 100083, China
Interests: geological hazards identification and monitoring; remote sensing intelligent object recognition

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Guest Editor
Department of Electronics and Informatics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Interests: hyperspectral analysis; land cover classification; machine learning; superresolution enhancement
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, intelligent methods—particularly deep learning and its emerging paradigms—are reshaping the field of environmental hazard identification, monitoring, etc. Traditional remote sensing tasks such as classification, detection, semantic segmentation, change detection, and 3D reconstruction are being revolutionized by the introduction of optical, hyperspectral, SAR, and LiDAR data; large-scale foundation models; and advanced neural architectures, which represents a significant opportunity to improve the identification and monitoring of environmental hazards using these AI methods and multimodal data.

This Special Issue aims to bring together the latest research on intelligent algorithms tailored to multimodal remote sensing (optical, hyperspectral, SAR, LiDAR, etc.) applications in environmental hazards. It will highlight both methodological innovations and novel applications that demonstrate the potential of intelligent algorithms to tackle core challenges with multimodal remote sensing data. Contributions addressing multimodal data (optical, hyperspectral, SAR, LiDAR etc.) integration, foundation and advanced large AI models, and applications for environmental hazard identification and monitoring are particularly welcome.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Intelligent algorithms for multimodal remote sensing applications for environmental hazard identification and monitoring;
  • Multimodal remote sensing data (optical, hyperspectral, SAR, LiDAR, thermal, and social sensing data) used for classification, super-resolution enhancement, etc.;
  • Advanced neural architectures (transformers, diffusion models, graph neural networks, and MoE structures) for remote sensing analysis;
  • Foundation models, pre-training, and transfer learning for Earth observation;
  • Physics-aware AI for environmental hazard identification and monitoring;
  • Efficient and scalable computing strategies (edge cloud, distributed learning, and lightweight models) for large-scale Earth observation.

This Special Issue welcomes original research papers, review articles, and methodological contributions. By focusing on intelligent algorithms and deep learning advances for multimodal remote sensing data (optical, hyperspectral, SAR, LiDAR) and applications, especially for environmental hazard identification and monitoring, it seeks to foster cross-disciplinary collaboration and accelerate the methodological progress of remote sensing research on environmental hazard applications in the era of artificial intelligence.

Dr. Jiangbo Xi
Dr. Chaofeng Ren
Dr. Qiong Wu
Prof. Dr. Jonathan C-W Chan
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.

Keywords

  • environmental hazard
  • intelligent algorithms
  • deep learning
  • multimodal data
  • hyperspectral data
  • foundation models
  • interpretable AI
  • self-supervised learning
  • change detection
  • 3D reconstruction
  • AI4EO (artificial intelligence for earth observation)

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

23 pages, 6722 KB  
Article
TLE-FEDformer: A Frequency-Domain Transformer Framework for Multi-Sensor Multi-Temporal Flood Inundation Mapping
by Pouya Ahmadi, Mohammad Javad Valadan Zoej, Mehdi Mokhtarzade, Nazila Kardan, Parya Ahmadi and Ebrahim Ghaderpour
Remote Sens. 2026, 18(6), 895; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18060895 - 14 Mar 2026
Viewed by 622
Abstract
Floods are among the most devastating natural hazards, intensified by climate change and rapid urbanization. This study introduces a novel deep learning framework, Transfer Learning-Enhanced FEDformer (TLE-FEDformer), designed for accurate and temporally consistent flood inundation mapping. The framework integrates pre-trained Xception backbones for [...] Read more.
Floods are among the most devastating natural hazards, intensified by climate change and rapid urbanization. This study introduces a novel deep learning framework, Transfer Learning-Enhanced FEDformer (TLE-FEDformer), designed for accurate and temporally consistent flood inundation mapping. The framework integrates pre-trained Xception backbones for robust multi-sensor feature extraction from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and Sentinel-2 optical imagery, a cross-modal fusion module to align heterogeneous modalities, and the Frequency Enhanced Decomposed Transformer (FEDformer) for efficient frequency-domain temporal modeling. This architecture effectively captures long-range dependencies and flood dynamics including onset, peak, duration, and recession, while addressing challenges such as cloud contamination, speckle noise, and limited labeled data. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate superior performance, achieving an overall accuracy of 98.12%, an F1-score of 98.55%, and an Intersection over Union (IoU) of 97.38%, outperforming baselines including Convolutional Neural Networks, Capsule Networks, and transfer learning alone. Ablation studies validate the contributions of each component, while sensitivity analyses confirm robustness across hyperparameters. Uncertainty quantification via Monte Carlo dropout highlights high confidence in core flooded regions. Preliminary generalization tests on independent events yield IoU > 94%, indicating strong transferability. TLE-FEDformer advances operational flood monitoring by providing reliable, scalable, and temporally consistent mapping from multi-sensor remote sensing data. This approach offers significant potential for real-time disaster response, early warning systems, and damage assessment in flood-prone regions worldwide. Full article
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