A survey of geomatics solutions for the rapid mapping of natural hazards

Natural hazards demand a rapid assessment of the crisis situation and the use of Geomatics platforms, sensors and techniques can efficiently answer this need. Remotely sensed data can, in fact, provide a valuable source of broad scale information at each stage of the disaster management cycle, supporting scientists and authorities in the decision-making process. Geomatics-based procedures and techniques can be especially exploited in the emergency mapping domain for the extraction of reference (pre-event) and crisis (post-event) geographic data. The major challenges today concern the efficient selection (and integration) of the most fit-for-purpose mapping solution(s) and the development of automatic procedures to increase efficiency in data processing. This survey article provides a review of the current optical remote sensing sensors (both satellite and airborne) for rapid mapping applications. Advantages and disadvantages are evaluated in order to support the selection process of the most appropriate means to gather the required information (i. e., significant and value-added data). Since valuable information should be delivered in a very short time, the management of time is defined as a priority and several solutions are discussed to pursue efficiency in both data acquisition and processing. With this in mind, the most significant issues affecting time in each step of the work-flow and overall accuracy are analyzed and reported.