Natural Disaster Risk Assessment and Management Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

The world has experienced an increasing impact of disasters in recent decades. Many regions are exposed to natural hazards, each with unique characteristics. The main causes for this increase are most probably related to climate change and an increase in vulnerable populations. To reduce disaster losses, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) clearly indicates that more efforts should be directed toward disaster risk management, with a focus on hazard assessment, elements-at-risk mapping, and vulnerability and risk assessment, all of which have an important spatial component. The use of remote sensing techniques has become an integrated approach in natural disaster risk assessment and management. Natural disaster risk assessment and management are carried out at multiple scales, ranging from global to community levels. These levels have their own objectives and spatial data requirements for hazard inventories, environmental data, triggering or causal factors, and elements at risk. Remote sensing techniques can provide an effective data source for natural disaster risk assessment and management, and an effective solution for studying different scale disaster problems. In recent years, significant progress has been achieved in the innovative exploitation of remote sensing techniques in natural disaster risk assessment and management. Natural disaster risk assessment and management represent one of the disciplines that have seen the greatest advances in the field of remote sensing in recent years.

This Special Issue seeks contributions involving innovative approaches or relevant case studies regarding natural disaster risk assessment and management using remote sensing techniques. Topics may cover anything from classical natural disaster risk assessment and management, to more comprehensive aims and scales. Hence, multisource data integration (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and thermal) and multi-scale approaches or studies focused on multi-hazard disaster risk assessment and integrated disaster risk management, among other issues, are welcome.

Articles may address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• Hazard assessment of natural disasters;
• Exposure evaluation of hazard-affected body;
• Vulnerability assessment of hazard-affected body;
• Disaster prevention and mitigation capability assessment;
• Natural disaster risk identification;
• Natural disaster risk survey;
• Natural disaster risk analysis;
• Natural disaster risk assessment;
• Integrated natural disaster risk assessment and management;
• Natural disaster chain risk assessment;
• Natural disaster risk early warning;
• Decision making for natural disaster risk;
• Disaster risk estimation in the context of climate change;
• Natural disaster insurance;
• Urban, community, and infrastructure disaster resilience assessment.

Prof. Dr. Jiquan Zhang
Dr. Zhijun Tong
Dr. Xingpeng Liu
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.