Spaceborne Instruments for Natural Disaster Monitoring: Current Capabilities and Future Needs
Keywords:
Natural Disasters, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), Hyperspectral ImagersAbstract
Natural disasters—including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, and landslides—continue to threaten human lives, disrupt critical infrastructure, and degrade ecosystems worldwide. The ability to monitor, predict, and mitigate the impacts of these events is crucial for reducing their devastating consequences. Spaceborne instruments have emerged as indispensable tools in disaster management, offering capabilities such as wide-area coverage, frequent revisit times, and the ability to observe remote or inaccessible regions. This review highlights the current state of spaceborne technologies, focusing on key instruments such as synthetic aperture radar (SAR), multispectral and hyperspectral imagers, thermal sensors, and altimeters, which are used for applications ranging from flood mapping and wildfire tracking to earthquake deformation analysis and sea-level monitoring.
Despite their transformative impact, existing systems face limitations, including delays in real-time data accessibility, inadequate spatial and temporal resolution, and challenges in integrating data from multiple sensors. Addressing these gaps is critical to enhancing the effectiveness of disaster monitoring and response. This review also explores emerging technologies and future needs, including the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) for faster data processing, advancements in spaceborne lidar for detailed topographic mapping, and the deployment of small satellite constellations for near-continuous global coverage. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of global collaboration and open-access data policies to democratize access to disaster monitoring tools.
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