Present State of the Art, Problems and Future Prospect of Remote Sensing for Disaster Prevention -General Remarks-

Abstract

Since disaster has a wide variety and complexity in the phenomena, time and space, depending on the disaster category, the natural and artificial conditions of the place of disaster occurrence, the application of remote sensing technology seems to be very effective for disater prevention and management.
Therefore, many case studies have been carried out in the various aspect such as flood, landslide, volcanic eruption, earthquake etc. This report summarize the results of many case studies in various disaster categories on the application of remote sensing for detecting the anomalous phenomena for prediction, state of affected area and its damage, and the risk assessment of a disaster.
However, low frequency of satellite observation and cloud cover prevent the effective and actual use of satellite data, and furthermore, higher spacial and spectral resolution is required in many cate-gories and quicker data distribution is necessary corresponding to the emergency for disaster prevention.
In 1990's, remarkable development of systems for remote sensing are to be expected from the viewpoint of earth observation including global environmental changes due to the expansion of human activities.
They will accelerate international cooperation not only on the development but also on intensive effective uses in the field of disaster prevention, especially on the monitoring of global environmental changes to induce anomalous natural phenomena contributing hazardous effects to human life and on technology transfer to developing countries based on IDNDR (International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction) from 1990.
However, to correrpond the actual urgent need for disaster prevention, a new satellite system and its supporting observation systems in the air, sea and on the ground specifically oriented to disaster prevention have to be urgently developed.