Smart GIS and Geo-Technology in Sustainable and Crisis Land and Urban Management

Dear Colleagues, 

Sustainable land management in each country is particularly difficult in the current reality of so many threats, e.g., environmental (water and food poisoning, air pollution, etc.), meteorological (climate change, extreme phenomena and global warming, etc.), sanitary (COVID-19 pandemic, etc.), social (overpopulation, excessive emigration, etc.), and security (terrorist attacks, armed conflicts, etc.). In this context, local governments are facing even greater challenges to ensuring a safe, friendly, and equal space for their citizens regardless of their social, material or health status. This is a task that requires high levels of competence and new approaches to crisis management and the use of intelligent tools to support the right decisions. Such innovative tools are offered by smart GIS and geotechnology for space monitoring, including localization of intensity and range of various negative and positive phenomena. All these need observations and efficient analyses in the case of rapidly developing threats. That is why it is so important to develop GIS and geotechnology in order to respond to the new demand for support of sustainable land management. This study will show the latest scientific solutions aimed at the improvement of GIS tools and the use of geotechnology in land management processes. 

The aim of this Special Issue is to share the latest achievements in the development of geographic information systems and the use of geotechnology (e.g., photogrammetry and other geosensors) in broadly understood crises but still sustainable land management. Until recently, sustainable land and urban management processes were associated with the use of land to meet changing human needs, while ensuring long-term socioeconomic and ecological functions of the land. However, land management in times of mass emergencies is more difficult and demanding. These threats at the present time are, for instance, sanitary threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Barbier, Burgess, 2020), overpopulation (Singh et al., 2019), excessive migration (Sobczyński, 2019), diminishing availability of cultivable land for food production (Benayas et al., 2007; Renwick et al., 2013; Iavicoli et al., 2017), water contamination and poisoning and flood risk (Morya et al., 2020, Islam, Managi, 2018; Murtaza el al. 2019), as well as climate change, extreme phenomena and global warming (Campbell et al., 2016; Wheeler, 2017), water poisoning (Dou et al. 2019), food poisoning (Ruiz-Capillas, Herrero, 2019), air pollution (Li et al., 2019), and security, e.g., terrorist attacks (Hu et al., 2019) and others. The more difficult the conditions and circumstances of land management, the more effective the functionality that is expected from information systems and geosensors to support crisis management. Are they able to rise to this challenge to support the land management of affected areas so that they do not lose their balance and development? The Special Issue will share the latest applications and developments in the use of GIS and geotechnology to monitor space, warn of risks, and thus support local governments and other managers in making appropriate and efficient decisions. This is particularly important and necessary in view of the new approaches and needs in land management.  

References:

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Li, X., Jin, L., & Kan, H. (2019). Air pollution: a global problem needs local fixes. Nature (2019): 437-439.

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Prof. Dr. Agnieszka Dawidowicz
Dr. Agnieszka Trystuła
Guest Editors

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