Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a safe, advanced, non-destructive and non-invasive imaging technique that can be effectively used for inspecting the subsurface as well as natural and man-made structures. During GPR surveys, a source is used to send high-frequency electromagnetic waves into the ground or structure under test; at the boundaries where the electromagnetic properties of media change, the electromagnetic waves may undergo transmission, reflection, refraction and diffraction; the radar sensors measure the amplitudes and travel times of signals returning to the surface.

This session aims at bringing together scientists, engineers, industrial delegates and end-users working in all GPR areas, ranging from fundamental electromagnetics to the numerous fields of applications. With this session, we wish to provide a supportive framework for (1) the delivery of critical updates on the ongoing research activities, (2) fruitful discussions and development of new ideas, (3) community-building through the identification of skill sets and collaboration opportunities, (4) vital exposure of early-career scientists to the GPR research community.

We have identified a series of topics of interest for this session, listed below.

1. Ground Penetrating Radar instrumentation
- Innovative GPR equipment
- Design, realization and optimization of GPR antennas
- Equipment testing and calibration procedures

2. Ground Penetrating Radar methodology
- Survey planning and data acquisition strategies
- Methods and tools for data analysis and interpretation
- Data processing algorithms, electromagnetic modelling, imaging and inversion techniques
- Studying the relationship between GPR sensed quantities and physical properties of inspected subsurface/structures useful for application needs
- Advanced data visualization methods to clearly and efficiently communicate the significance of GPR data

3. Ground Penetrating Radar applications and case studies
- Earth sciences
- Civil engineering
- Environmental engineering
- Archaeology and cultural heritage
- Management of water resources
- Humanitarian mine clearance
- Vital signs detection of trapped people in natural and man-made disasters
- Planetary exploration

4. Contributions on the combined use of Ground Penetrating Radar and other geoscience instrumentation, in all applications fields

5. Communication and education initiatives and methods

Additional information
This session is organized by Members of TU1208 GPR Association (www.gpradar.eu/tu1208); the association is a follow-up initiative of COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action TU1208 “Civil engineering applications of Ground Penetrating Radar”.

The new scenario related to the global urbanization process and its impact on environmental sustainability and resilience to natural disasters, especially the ones related to the Climate Change, strongly call holistic multidisciplinary and multi-sectorial approaches for the management of urban areas and Cultural heritages.
These approach aim at providing solutions based on the integration of technologies, methodologies and best practices (remote and local monitoring, simulating and forecasting, characterizing, maintaining, restoring, etc.), with the purpose to increase the resilience of the assets, also thanks to the exploitation of dedicated ICT architectures and innovative eco-solutions and also by accounting the social and economic value of the investigated areas, especially in CH frame.
In this context, attention is also focused on the high-resolution geophysical imaging is assuming a great relevance to manage the underground and to adopt new strategies for the mitigation of geological risks.
This session represents a good forum to present, technologies best practices and share different experiences in the field of the urban areas and CH management and protection, against the multi-risk scenarios and for the different situations at European and worldwide level. Finally, great attention will be devoted to the success cases, with a specific focus on recent international projects on smart cities and Cultural heritage in Europe and other countries.

Progressively stricter requirements in geophysical prospecting, in urban and inter-urban monitoring make it important to look continuously for innovative solutions to new and old complex problems. In particular, investigation and monitoring of pollution, hydrological resources, energy efficiency, cultural heritage, cities and transportation infrastructures nowadays require technological and methodological innovations of geophysical and sensing techniques in order to properly understand the limits of the current state of art and to identify where possible the most convenient strategies to overcome limitations of current approaches. This goal can be achieved either with more advanced solutions in a general sense or with dedicated solutions, particularly suitable for the specific problem at hand.
Integrated prospecting, refined data processing, new models, hardware innovations, new ICT information and telecommunications systems can and should cooperate with each other in this sense. It is important that the scientific community finds a moment for considering the connection between adjacent aspects of the same problem, e.g. to achieve improved geophysical data, safe and reliable environmental and structural monitoring, improved processing as much as possible.
The session “ Innovative instrumentations, techniques, geophysical methods and models for near surface geophysics, cities and transportation infrastructures aims to propose one such moment, where multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary competences can interact with each other, possibly finding possible new ways to cooperate and to exchange experiences reciprocally to reach sustainable solutions.

The IR (MWIR 3-5micron and LWIR 7-12micron) sensing technologies have reached a significant level of maturity and has become a powerful method of Earth surface sensing.
Thermal sensing is currently used for characterize land surface Temperature (LST) and Land Surface Emissivity (LSE) and many other environmental proxy variables, which part of them can have a further relevance when assimilated into hydrological and climatological models.
The usefulness of IR sensing has been experimented in many environmental applications and also in the spatio-temporal domain for spatial patterns identification.
The session welcomes communications based on the actual of next future IR imagery from broadband to multi/hyperspectral applied to proximal or remote sensing (ECOSTRESS, ASTER, Sentinel3, Landsat etc. and airborne sensors) in the following specific objectives:
- IR instruments solution
- Instrument radiometric calibration procedures
- Algorithms retrieval for Temperature and Emissivity
- Soil properties characterization
- Evapo-Transpiration, water plants stress and drought
- IR targets identification
- Archaeological prospection
- Urban areas and infrastructure investigation
- Geophysical phenomena characterization
- IR synergy with optical imagery

LINKED TO THIS SESSION IS A REMOTE SENSING JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE "Proximal and Remote Sensing in the MWIR and LWIR Spectral Range" WITH DEADLINE DECEMBER 2019.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/remotesensing/special_issues/EGU_TIR

SUBMISSIONS TO THIS SESSION AND TO THE RS JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUE ARE WELCOME

Soil moisture is a crucial variable in many scientific areas, including hydrology, environmental studies, agriculture, climate research and other fields of geoscience. Electromagnetic devices enable fast, non-destructive and easy-to-automate soil water content determination. We invite presentations concerning in situ measurements and monitoring of soil moisture by the use of electromagnetic sensors, including TDR, FDR, GPR, capacitance, impedance inductance and resistance devices.
The subject of the session will include:
 progress in measurement methods and devices,
 calibration and verification studies,
 practical applications of soil moisture measurements in agriculture, environmental studies, hydrology, civil engineering, etc.,
 electromagnetic determination of physical properties of materials in the context of soil moisture measurements,
 standardization of soil moisture measuring methods and equipment,
 computational methods of electromagnetic wave propagation in dispersive and lossy dielectrics including theory and applications of electromagnetic mixing rules and formulas,
 integrated techniques using RF and/or microwave dielectric measurements with other methods such as impedance spectroscopy, THz spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, NMR, etc.

Construction materials (natural stone, aggregates, bricks, cement, lime, clay, etc.) form a wide and heterogeneous group (both from the genetic and technological point of view), which deserves attention from the scientific community due to their long-term use, importance for the society and sensitivity to the environment. Most of the geomaterials have been also used in important monuments of the World Cultural Heritage. However, our knowledge of many aspects of these materials is still rather limited. This session would like to focus on thorough discussions of the following topics:
• characterisation of traditional raw materials and their products, such as natural stone, crushed stone, sands and gravels, clay, inorganic binders (lime, natural cements, hydraulic lime, and gypsum), earth and adobe;
• recovery of traditional and historic knowledge of their processing and use;
• assessment of stability (durability) problems associated to long-term exposure of these materials to the anthroposphere;
• optimization of traditional construction materials (surface treatments, use of organic or inorganic additives, etc.);
• study of interactions and compatibility between traditional construction materials and modern restoration products
• availability of traditional materials in modern society, including comparative studies between small-scale production of materials (e.g. natural cement) and large-scale industrial processing;
• use of local materials as a part of cultural and technological heritage;
• technological properties and their testing (including relevance of individual tests, limits of methodologies, development of new methods);
• on site and laboratory standardized (ASTM, EN, etc.) and non-standardized testing techniques and their limitations for material characterization;
• monitoring and characterization of weathering features;
• monitoring of temperatures, moisture and salts, particularly under the viewpoint of climate change;
• geological evaluation of geomaterials deposits, i.e. different prospecting and exploration approaches applied to specific features of these materials in different geoenvironments, such as geostatistical evaluation, relevance of reserves and resources classification schemes;
• compositional (mineralogical, chemical, etc.) and genetic aspects that influence processing and final use of geomaterials and their quality;
• alternative use for waste materials from the exploitation and processing of geomaterials;
• durability of geomaterials once being placed in buildings or other structures.

Topographic data are fundamental to landscape characterization across the geosciences, for monitoring change and supporting process modelling. Over the last decade, the dominance of laser-based instruments for high resolution data collection has been challenged by advances in digital photogrammetry and computer vision, particularly in ‘structure from motion’ (SfM) algorithms, which offer a new paradigm to geoscientists.

High resolution topographic (HiRT) data are now obtained over spatial scales from millimetres to kilometres, and over durations of single events to lasting time series (e.g. from sub-second to decadal-duration time-lapse), allowing evaluation of dependencies between event magnitudes and frequencies. Such 4D-reconstruction capabilities enable new insight in diverse fields such as soil erosion, micro-topography reconstruction, volcanology, glaciology, landslide monitoring, and coastal and fluvial geomorphology. Furthermore, broad data integration from multiple sensors offers increasingly exciting opportunities.

This session will evaluate the advances in techniques to model topography and to study patterns of topographic change at multiple temporal and spatial scales. We invite contributions covering all aspects of HiRT reconstruction in the geosciences, and particularly those which transfer traditional expertise or demonstrate a significant advance enabled by novel datasets. We encourage contributions describing workflows that optimize data acquisition and post-processing to guarantee acceptable accuracies and to automate data application (e.g. geomorphic feature detection and tracking), and field-based experimental studies using novel multi-instrument and multi-scale methodologies. A major goal is to provide a cross-disciplinary exchange of experiences with modern technologies and data processing tools, to highlight their potentials, limitations and challenges in different environments.

Solicited speaker: Kuo-Jen Chang (National Taipei University of Technology) - UAS LiDAR data processing, quality assessment and geosciences prospects

Weathering, tectonics, gravitational and volcanic processes can transform the regular sediment delivery from unstable slopes in catastrophic landslides. Mass spreading and mass wasting processes can potentially evolve in rapid landslides are among the most dangerous natural hazards that threaten people and infrastructures, directly or through secondary events like tsunamis.

Documentation and monitoring of these phenomena requires the adoption of a variety of methods. The difficulties in detecting their initiation and propagation have progressively prompted research into a wide variety of monitoring technologies. Nowadays, the combination of distributed sensor networks and remote sensing techniques represents a unique opportunity to gather direct observations. A growing number of scientists with diverse backgrounds are dealing with the monitoring of processes ranging from volcano flak deformations to large debris flows and lahars. However, there is a need of improving quality and quantity of both documentation procedures and instrumental observations that would provide knowledge for more accurate hazard assessment, land-use planning and design of mitigation measures, including early warning systems. Successful strategies for hazard assessment and risk reduction would imply integrated methodology for instability detection, modeling and forecasting. Nevertheless, only few studies exist to date in which numerical modelling integrate geological, geophysical, geodetic studies with the aim of understanding and managing of terrestrial and subaqueous volcano slope instability.

Scientists working in the fields of hazard mapping, modelling, monitoring and early warning are invited to present their recent advancements in research and feedback from practitioners and decision makers. We encourage multidisciplinary contributions that integrate field-based on-shore and submarine studies (geological, geochemical), geomorphological mapping and account collection, with advanced techniques, as remote sensing data analysis, geophysical investigations, ground-based monitoring systems, and numerical and analogical modelling of volcano spreading, slope stability and debris flows.

Seismic techniques are becoming widely used to detect and quantitatively characterise a wide variety of natural processes occurring at the Earth’s surface. These processes include mass movements such as landslides, rock falls, debris flows and lahars; glacial phenomena such as icequakes, glacier calving/serac falls, glacier melt and supra- to sub-glacial hydrology; snow avalanches; water storage and water dynamics phenomena such as water table changes, river flow turbulence and fluvial sediment transport. Where other methods often provide limited spatial and temporal coverage, seismic observations allow recovering sequences of events with high temporal resolution and over large areas. These observational capabilities allow establishing connections with meteorological drivers, and give unprecedented insights on the underlying physics of the various Earth’s surface processes as well as on their interactions (chains of events). These capabilities are also of first interest for real time hazards monitoring and early warning purposes. In particular, seismic monitoring techniques can provide relevant information on the dynamics of flows and unstable slopes, and thus allow for the identification of precursory patterns of hazardous events and timely warning.

This session aims at bringing together scientists who use seismic methods to study Earth surface dynamics. We invite contributions from the field of geomorphology, cryospheric sciences, seismology, natural hazards, volcanology, soil system sciences and hydrology. Theoretical, field based and experimental approaches are highly welcome.

The number and quality of seismic stations and networks in Europe continually improves, nevertheless there is always scope to optimize their performance. In this session we welcome contributions from all aspects of seismic network installation, operation and management. This includes site selection; equipment testing and installation; planning and implementing communication paths; policies for redundancy in data acquisition, processing and archiving; and integration of different datasets including GPS and OBS.

Ecosystems, their abiotic and biotic compartments as well as their internal processes and interactions can be interpreted as the result of numerous evolutionary steps during system development. Understanding ecosystem development can be regarded, therefore, as crucial for understanding ecosystem functioning. This session will highlight research in this field within two parts.

The first part of this session is dedicated to experimental approaches to disentangle these complex processes and interactions of the Critical Zone. Well-known flagship sites in this sense are, e.g., Biosphere2 in the USA or Hydrohill in China. In addition, post-mining landscapes worldwide offer multiple opportunities for establishing artificial experimental sites for various purposes. Many experimental sites are based on hydrological catchments as integrative landscape units. Other large-scale experiments focus on selected parts of ecosystems which were modified or transplanted. This part of the session tries to create a global overview on large-scale landscape experiments on ecohydrological, pedological, biogeochemical or ecological processes within the Critical Zone.

The second part is related to the co-evolution of spatial patterns of vegetation, soils and landforms. These patterns are recognized as sources of valuable information that can be used to infer the state and function of ecosystems. Complex interactions and feedbacks between climate, soils and biotic factors are involved in the development of landform-soil-vegetation patterns, and play an important role on the stability of landscapes. In addition, large shifts in the organization of vegetation and soils are associated with land degradation, frequently involving large changes in the functioning of landscapes. This part of the session will focus on ecogeomorphological and ecohydrological aspects of landscapes, conservation of soil resources, and the restoration of ecosystem functions.

Invited talks will be given by Dr. Abad Chabbi (Director of Research at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research, INRA) on “Challenges, insights and perspectives associated with combining observation and experimentation research infrastructure“. Part two of the session is proud to announce the invited talk of Prof. Praveen Kumar (Lovell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois, USA, Director of the US NSF Critical Zone Observatory for Intensively Managed Landscapes) on "Co-evolution of landscape and carbon profile through depth: understanding the interplay between transport and biochemical dynamics".

This session aims to bridge the existing gap between the process-focused fields (hydrology, geomorphology, soil sciences, natural hazards, planetary science, geo-biology, archaeology) and the technical domain (engineering, computer vision, machine learning, and statistics) where terrain analysis approaches are developed.
The rapid growth of survey technologies and computing advances and the increase of data acquisition from various sources (platforms and sensors) has led to a vast data swamp with unprecedented spatio-temporal range, density, and resolution (from submeter to global scale data), which requires efficient data processing to extract suitable information. The challenge is now the interpretation of surface morphology for a better understanding of processes at a variety of scales, from micro, to local, to global.

We aim to foster inter-disciplinarity with a focus on new techniques in digital terrain analysis and production from any discipline which touches on geomorphometry, including but not exclusive to geomorphology (e.g., tectonic/volcanic/climatic/glacial), planetary science, archaeology, geo-biology, natural hazards, computer vision, remote sensing, image processing.
We invite submissions related to the successful application of geomorphometric methods, innovative geomorphometric variables as well as their physical, mathematical and geographical meanings. Submissions related to new techniques in high-resolution terrain or global scale data production and analysis, independent of the subject, as well as studies focused on the associated error and uncertainty analyses, are also welcome. We actively encourage contributors to present work “in development”, as well as established techniques being used in a novel way. We strongly encourage young scientists to contribute and help drive innovation in our community, presenting their work to this session.

We want to foster collaboration and the sharing of ideas across subject-boundaries, between technique developers and users, enabling us as a community to fully exploit the wealth of knowledge inherent in our digital landscape. Just remember, the driver for new ideas and applications often comes from another speciality, discipline or subject: Your solution may already be out there waiting for you!

In recent years, debris flows are becoming more frequent and larger in magnitude due to global climate change, resulting in the loss of human life and substantial damage to infrastructure. In light of such trends, there is increasing national interest for the development of proactive technologies to prevent and mitigate debris flow disasters. Although many disaster prevention facilities are being built, there are still questions regarding the accuracy and reliability of the methodologies and techniques being utilized for the design of these structures. Therefore, in order to improve existing disaster prevention measures and effectively reduce damage, it is necessary to make scientific and technological strides at each stage of the design process of disaster prevention facilities. This session mainly focuses on methods for the prevention and mitigation of debris flow disasters, including the following topics:
(1) Advanced data collection methods for the collection of site properties such as the utilization of UAV-based LiDAR, spectroscopic techniques, etc.
(2) Prediction techniques that provide quantitative information of debris flow through big data analysis, machine learning models, and numerical modeling
(3) Performance analysis of various types of disaster prevention facilities based on small-scale & large-scaled experiments and numerical simulations
(4) Optimum design of disaster prevention facilities through sensitivity analysis and parametric studies
We also welcome submissions that focus on new techniques and design methodologies related to the 4th industrial revolution.

Keywords
Debris flow, Disaster prevention facilities, Optimum design, Experimental and numerical studies, Big data, Machine learning techniques

---------------
Landslides are one of the most widespread and destructive natural hazards in the world. However, it is possible to reduce hazards caused by the landslides by monitoring and/or early warning systems. Today, lots of systems are available for the purpose and new systems have been developing continuously. The aim of this session is to gain a complete knowledge about the landslide monitoring and early warning systems by introducing different systems used, learning new technologies about the topic, investigating their properties, comparing the techniques and devices.

Keywords: Landslide monitoring systems, early warning systems

Remarkable technological progress in remote sensing and geophysical surveying, together with the recent development of innovative data treatment techniques are providing new scientific opportunities to investigate landslide processes and hazards all over the world. Remote sensing and geophysics, as complementary techniques for the characterization and monitoring of landslides, offer the possibility to effectively infer and correlate an improved information of the shallow -or even deep- geological layers for the development of conceptual and numerical models of slope instabilities. Their ability to provide integrated information about geometry, rheological properties, water content, rate of deformation and time-varying changes of these parameters is ultimately controlling our capability to detect, model and predict landslide processes at different scales (from site specific to regional studies) and over multiple dimensions (2D, 3D and 4D).

This session welcomes innovative contributions and lessons learned from significant case studies using a myriad of remote sensing and geophysical techniques and algorithms, including optical and radar sensors, new satellite constellations (including the emergence of the Sentinel-1A and 1B), Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS) / Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) / drones, high spatial resolution airborne LiDAR missions, terrestrial LIDAR, Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry, time-lapse cameras, multi-temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar differential interferometry (DInSAR), GPS surveying, Seismic Reflection, Surface Waves Analysis, Geophysical Tomography (seismic and electrical), Seismic Ambient Vibrations, Acoustic Emissions, Electro-Magnetic surveys, low-cost (/cost-efficient) sensors, commercial use of small satellites, Multi-Spectral images, Real time monitoring, in-situ sensing, etc.

The session will provide an overview of the progress and new scientific approaches of Earth Observation (EO) applications, as well as of surface- and borehole-based geophysical surveying for investigating landslides. A special emphasis is expected not only on the collection but also on the interpretation and use of high spatiotemporal resolution data to characterize the main components of slope stability and dynamics, including the type of material, geometrical and mechanical properties, depth of water table, saturation conditions and ground deformation over time. The discussion of recent experiences and the use of advanced processing methods and innovative algorithms that integrate data from remote sensing and geophysics with other survey types are highly encouraged, especially with regard to their use on (rapid) mapping, characterizing, monitoring and modelling of landslide behaviour, as well as their integration on real-time Early Warning Systems and other prevention and protection initiatives. Other pioneering applications using big data treatment techniques, data-driven approaches and/or open code initiatives for investigating mass movements using the above described techniques will also be considered on this session.

We invited prof. Denis Jongmans (Isterre, Université Grenoble Alpes, France), as guest speaker for the session.