Typhoon Faxai (also known as the Reiwa 1 Bōsō Peninsula Typhoon) made landfall in Japan’s Kanto region on September 9, 2019. The typhoon brought a record-breaking rainstorm; the maximum instantaneous wind speed was recorded at 10 meteorological stations in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. In such a case, the local government seeks to conduct an investigation of the damage caused by the typhoon. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an effective tool for investigating such damage when the flight conditions are appropriate. Here, we evaluated a detection method of damaged vegetation at a City Park in Chiba Prefecture before and after Typhoon Faxai obtained by a UAV equipped with a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and a multi-spectral camera. The badly damaged vegetation in the study area was sampled from the spatial model subtracted a digital elevation model published by Geospatial Information Authority of Japan from a digital surface model generated by the LiDAR data. We proposed the use of a spatio-temporal difference ratio (SDR) based on two observations to assess the level of damage to vegetation derived from multi-spectral characteristics. These characteristics were based on five band reflectance values obtained by the UAV, and they were analyzed in the region of interest from the LiDAR data. The results demonstrated that the SDR can be used for the quantitative assessments of the damage level of vegetation in the range of 0 to 1.0. Our method can thus be used for detecting and evaluating the level of damage to vegetation in urban parks when natural disasters occur.

Coastal Zone (CZ) is one of the significant regions for its dynamic and diverse nature and biodiversity. The Transition of Land cover (LC) driven by extensive, and accelerating process, mainly driven by natural phenomena and anthropogenic activities which make a deleterious effect on the coastal region’s fauna and flora, as well as the environmental and ecological systems. LCC (Landcover classification) is a significant issue for environmental managers for sustainable management and Geographic Informatics Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) techniques have been shown to have a high probability of recognizing land cover patterns and change detection due to periodic coverage, data integrity, and provision of data in a broad range. Nijhum Dwip is one of Island in the southern coastal area of Bangladesh has gone significant changes over the last several years. This study concerned with Landcover change detection, identification, analysis, and interpretation using GIS and RS data. To address this issue, this research deployed a mixed-method approach with dominant research methods and utilized a time-series of Landsat 8 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM＋) satellite imagery data, covering the time frame within1990 to 2018. Change detection in land-cover was carried out using a workflow consisting of establishing the LULC (Land use Land cover) classification scheme, image data acquisition, scene processing, data analysis, post-processing, and validation. Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) utilized to perform image classification based on the 2018 image, and Cross-Correlation Analysis (CCA) used to identify changes between image pairs. The results showed that during the last three decades, three major changes took place. Forest vegetation cover decreased significantly; on the other side, the total land area increases gradually. The deforestation rate is high due to an increase in agricultural use and the number of populations also increased dynamically. Concerning land change and degradation, the study area the mean annual potential land change was high. This study reveals that there is a relationship between LC (Land cover) change and land degradation that land cover type plays an important role in protecting soil from land degradation in coastal areas. Though the area is protected under the conservation act, increase intensive agriculture, settlement and population conversion the forest gradually.

In recent years, large-scale natural disasters are occurring more frequently. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is doing an experimental activity to validate the effectiveness of satellite data, mostly Advanced land Observing Satellite-2 (ALOS-2), in grasping the situation of disaster damage. In this paper, we will introduce JAXA’s cooperative activities with the ministries towards disaster prevention, satellite’s emergency observation products, “Disaster Prevention Interface,” and case study of large- and long-scale water-induced disaster that occurred on July 2020.

Global Society has recognized the risk of disasters increasingly linked to climate change and needed to urgently tackle its influence on human development. To meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), a holistic collaboration from the government to local society throughout the world aims to minimize the loss of human lives and properties. In this concept, the Sentinel Asia initiative and the International Disaster Charter by utilizing space borne remote sensing can help disaster management organizations for their operation in emergency. This paper introduces their framework and the latest activity.

While the global space industry market is expanding rapidly to about 43 trillion yen in 2019, Japan aims to double the current size of the domestic space industry market to 2.4 trillion yen by 2030. The Japanese government has been providing various measures to attract private investment by means of legislation and supplying risk money. In recent years, successes of small satellites business by start-ups have created a new industrial ecosystem, which requires new business models. In response to the trend, JAXA has conducted various collaborations with private companies in the past years. This article introduces JAXA’s recent efforts. JAXA/SAOC has recently released open and free ALOS-3 pseudo data on Tellus in order to implement POC for new business applications by private companies for the areas of Fukuoka, Nagano, Manila, and Hanoi. GSMaP and other global environmental datasets developed by JAXA/EORC have been used to develop an agricultural weather index insurance by a private company as well as to promote smart farming or smart fishery business in combination with ground data. A new partnership program J-SPARC was established in 2018 and has implemented collaboration projects with about 30 companies. JAXA also collaborates with local governments to host events such as workshops and ideathons in order to promote use of satellite data.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plays an important role to provide solutions to the various societal challenges through its Earth observation satellites. Since the satellites can monitor over the world, the data should be used for the global challenges. In order to do so, it is indispensable to engage to various types of international partners and stakeholders. The paper introduces how JAXA plays the role for international collaboration and what has been accomplished to date.