| Synopsis: |
Every year, natural disasters cause substantial loss of life and livelihoods globally, costing an estimated over $100 billion per year in the form of property loss and mobilization of emergency response personnel and equipment. It is critical to monitor, model and predict the risks of natural hazards in order to save lives, enhance societal resilience to natural hazards, and reduce economic losses. Modern technologies such as remote sensing, geographical information system, and high-performance computation have greatly propelled advances in the studies of natural hazards. Remote sensing, in particular, is a useful and important tool for monitoring, modeling and early warning of natural hazards (e.g. landslides, floods, earthquakes, tornados). Recent advanced methods include but not limited in: optical images, satellite and ground-based SAR, airborne and terrestrial laser scanning, GNSS, hyperspectral imaging and sensor network. With the rapid development of technology, future improvements in resolution, precision, efficiency, accuracy and smartness can be expected. The overall objectives of this proposed book is to review and summarize the recent progresses in the monitoring, modeling and early warning of natural hazards, including floods, landslides, droughts, hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes and volcanoes, and collect novel techniques and discover potential applications. The first section of the book will thus cover the methods and techniques used to monitor, detect and measure the natural hazard events and the means to obtain important informant and data to study nature hazards. The second section will describe the uses of remote sensing technologies to investigate the processes and causes of natural hazards and recent advances in the theories and mechanisms of natural hazards. Last, the third section will introduce the existing operational, early warning and forecasting systems for natural hazards.This proposed book will include four sections: section one describes the methodologies used to monitor and detect the occurrences of natural hazards; section two summarizes the application of remote sensing technologies in investigating and understanding natural hazards; and section three provides an overview of the existing early warning and forecasting systems for natural hazards. In section one, we will present recent studies and advances that are focused on how to obtain important and necessary data to conduct the studies of natural hazards. In section two, we will compile recent advances in the theories and mechanisms that govern the processes and occurrences of natural hazards. In section three, the topic is shifted to the operational, early warning and forecasting systems for natural hazards. |