This session aims at attracting interdisciplinary research from diverse fields related to geospatial problems in disaster risk management. The cyclic concept of disaster management serves as background and outline in order to allow comprehensive discussions on related aspects, ranging from emergency response via risk analysis including hazard and vulnerability assessment to mitigation and early warning.
The concept of GEOSS, the Global Earth Observing System of Systems is a global and flexible network intended to provide an extensive range of information and decision support tools about the system of the Earth to a variety of users. Disasters afre highlighted as one of its nine societal benefit areas. In that context it is stated that GEOSS is about integrating Earth observations with other information to help planners reduce vulnerability, strengthen preparedness and early-warning measures and, after disaster strikes, rebuild housing and infrastructure in ways that limit future risks. This backs up the recent trend in dealing with disaster issues using more holistic and integrated approaches which is also evident in the scientific literature.
Multi-source and multi-scale geospatial and space related information as derived from remote sensing and ancillary data sources provide broad possibilities to consistently and quantitatively cover complex aspects of disaster management. The spatial component in most cases is essential in order to get comprehensive insight and merge from theoretical to applied result-oriented research.
Both conceptual and applied contributions from all fields of research featuring a geospatial component are invited for submission to this session. After the conference selected accepted abstracts will be proposed for extended publication in a special issue of Earthzine, an IEEE web magazine dealing with all aspects of the GEOSS societal benefit areas.
We are looking forward to an interesting program including innovative geospatial approaches in disaster management and intend raising awareness about pending issues in integrative analysis of complex human-natural coupled systems.