NHESSNatural Hazards and Earth System SciencesNHESSNat. Hazards Earth Syst. Sci.1684-9981Copernicus PublicationsGöttingen, Germany10.5194/nhess-18-3085-2018Preface: The use of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) in monitoring applications and management of natural hazardsPreface: The use of RPAS in monitoring applications and management of natural hazardsGiordanDanieledaniele.giordan@irpi.cnr.ithttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0136-2436HayakawaYuichi S.https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2053-8986NexFrancescohttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-5712-6902TarolliPaolohttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-0043-5226Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Turin, ItalyCenter for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, JapanUniversity of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Twente, the NetherlandsDepartment of Land, Environment, Agriculture and Forestry, University of Padova, Padua, Italynow at: Faculty of Environmental Earth Science, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, JapanDaniele Giordan (daniele.giordan@irpi.cnr.it)19November2018181130853087This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is available from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/18/3085/2018/nhess-18-3085-2018.htmlThe full text article is available as a PDF file from https://nhess.copernicus.org/articles/18/3085/2018/nhess-18-3085-2018.pdf
The use of remotely piloted aerial systems (RPAS) has shown a strong
improvement in last years. Starting from typical applications like
archaeology (Koutsoudisa et al., 2014; Mesas-Carrascosa et al., 2016;
Lazzari and Gioia, 2017), today these systems are nowadays used in different domains
including precision farming (Salamì et al., 2014), architecture (Roca et
al., 2013; Dominici et al., 2017), study of natural phenomena (Gomez and
Purdie, 2016; Giordan et al., 2017) and their effects (Giordan et al.,
2018b), and study of human impact on Earth (Xiang et al., 2018). RPAS
equipped with RGB photo cameras and the development of more efficient
photogrammetric techniques (Westoby et al., 2012) had simplified the fast
acquisition of a sequence of images and they had multiplied the possible
uses of these systems that are now able to reliably and easily produce
a digital surface model and an orthophoto (Nex and Remondino, 2014). These
approaches can be very useful for the study of natural hazards, for which an
on-demand system able to acquire high-resolution image datasets in a
limited lapse of time can be very useful. The availability of a detailed
representation of the hazardous natural process or its effects can be an
important support for (i) comprehension of the evolution of the natural
process that could create a hazardous condition, (ii) timely monitoring
during emergencies, (iii) residual risk assessment, and (iv) first
estimation of occurred damages. In this special issue, we selected and
published different contributions presented in a thematic session of the
European Geosciences Union General Assembly of 2016 and 2017. These sessions
were dedicated to the use of RPAS in monitoring applications and management
of natural hazards. The objective of the presented special issue is to
provide the scientific community with a wide description of possible uses of
RPAS for the study of active natural processes and their impacts on
environment and society. Giordan et al. (2018a) published a review of the
possible use of RPAS for the characterization and management of landslides,
floods, wildfires, volcanic activity, and earthquakes. Glacier evolution and
related hazard assessment has been described by Fugazza et al. (2018), who
presented the use of RPAS for the study of one of the most important
glaciers in Italy, the Forni Glacier. The theme of landslides is considered
by many authors with different approaches. Török et al. (2018) and
Saroglou et al. (2018) focused their attention on rockfalls and their
possible effects. Rock slope stability has also been considered by Salvini
et al. (2018), to support the safety of rocky mining activities. Landslide
identification and mapping is described by Fiorucci et al. (2018), who
considered ultra-high-resolution images for the definition of landslide
limits and their evolution. Peppa et al. (2017) presented a methodology for
the definition of the landslide evolution too: in particular, their paper
proposes the use of a multi-temporal dataset and a cross-correlation
approach for the detection and measurement of morphological changes due to landslide activity. The geomorphological description and the potential
risk of debris avalanche (i.e. a particular type of landslide) deposits
related to the collapse of a volcano sector is presented by Hayakawa
et al. (2018). Hayakawa obtained a high-resolution DTM using RPAS that was
fundamental for the geomorphological description of the studied area. A
similar approach was used by Chang et al. (2018), who focused their paper on
landslides and used RPAS for the geomorphological investigation. In this
paper, authors paid particular attention to the triggering role of active
faults. The theme of active tectonic processes is also considered by
Deffontaines et al. (2018), who describe the characterization of active
faults in Taiwan, with specific regard to the earthquakes that occurred on
21 September 1999 and 26 December 2006 using different datasets: GPS
monitoring data, PS-InSAR time series, and mean- and high-resolution
digital surface model (DSM)
derived from old aerial photos and RPAS. The use of RPAS in post-earthquake
scenarios is described by Cannioto et al. (2017), who presented how RPAS
could help during search and rescue activities with the recognition of the
shortest survey path in highly damaged areas. The use of RPAS for emergency
investigation is described by Huang et al. (2017), who describe a
methodological approach for the use of RPAS for emergency investigations of
a single geo-hazard mission.
Another relevant topic is the effect of surficial water flow and related
hazards. An automatic gully detection application is proposed by Feurer et
al. (2018), who also suggest the fruitful use of kites for the acquisition
of aerial images. Benassai et al. (2017) presented the study of rip current
effects and hydrodynamic simulation results based on the use of RPAS, while
the use of these platforms for the study of disastrous flood effects is
presented by Izumida et al. (2017). Duo et al. (2018) proposed a methodology
for the rapid mapping of impacts by extreme storm events on coasts based on
the use of RPAS.
The collection of papers proposed to the NHESS readers provides a critical
description of the state of the art in the use of RPAS for different scenarios.
In particular, the sequence of papers can be considered an exhaustive
representation of the state of the art of the methodologies and approaches
applied to the study and management of natural hazards.
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