Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems for Policy Decision Support

The management of data to understand complex and interwoven processes of sustainable development has been a great challenge for researchers, planners, and decision makers. Remote sensing and GIS-based policy decision support systems not only help them to solve spatially related environmental and socio-economic issues; they also provide a powerful tool for integrating spatial and non-spatial datasets with analytical and spatial models and knowledge domains. Recent advances in the modern spatial tools of remote sensing and GIS combined with advanced computation techniques have enhanced the efficiency and capabilities of policy development.

 

This book expands the scientific knowledge base in various physical and socio-economic issues among scholars, planners, and decision makers for policy development and research regarding sustainable development. It also demonstrates the importance of modern spatial decision support tools of remote sensing and GIS to better understand sustainable development processes and policy development. Furthermore, the book discusses case studies providing new insights as to how remote sensing and GIS-based decision support systems contribute to understanding physical and socio-economic processes and developing pragmatic policy for sustainable development.

This book covers land surface temperature, hydrological processes, terrain mapping, flood and landslide hazards, land use and land cover dynamics, crime hotspots, urban health issues, tourism, agriculture, forest management, flood mitigation, urban sprawl, and village information systems, among others. Readers will find this book to be an invaluable resource for understanding and solving diverse physical and human issues for policy development related to sustainable planning and management.

R.B. Singh is the secretary general and treasurer of the International Geographical Union (IGU); chair of the Research Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)–Central Food Technological Research Institute of the Government of India; and a member of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the scientific committee of Urban Health and Well-Being. He has served as professor and head of geography at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. Earlier, he was the vice president of the IGU during the period of 2012–2018. He was awarded the prestigious Japan Society for the Promotion of Scientific Research Fellowship and has presented papers and chaired sessions in more than 40 countries. He has published 13 books, 34 edited research volumes, and more than 230 research papers. He has supervised 33 Ph.D. and 81 M.Phil. students. In 1988 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization/the International Social Science Council awarded him research and study grants in social and human sciences. Recently, the Government of India – National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog (policy think-tank) invited him to join the prestigious committee Vision India 2035.

 

Manish Kumar is currently working as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, School of Basic Sciences, Central University of Haryana, Mahendergarh. Earlier, from January 2016 to February 2020, he worked as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Kalindi College, University of Delhi. Prior to that, from January 2009 to December 2014, Dr. Kumar worked as a lecturer in the M.Sc. Remote Sensing and GIS Course of Kumaun University, Nainital. He has also worked as a research associate in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project on “rurbanization”. In addition, he has been a visiting faculty member at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi. Dr. Kumar holds a Ph.D. degree from Kumaun University and a postgraduate diploma in remote sensing and GIS from the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dehradun. He has published more than 25 research papers in various national and international Science Citation Index and Scopus-indexed journals. His special area of research interest includes the application of remote sensing and GIS in urban and regional planning, land use and land cover dynamics, and urban climate change, among others. 

 

Dinesh Kumar Tripathi is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Kamla Nehru Institute of Physical and Social Sciences in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh (affiliated with Dr. Rammanohar Lohia Avadh University in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh), and he has been engaged in teaching and research for the past 25 years. Dr. Tripathi’s academic interests include remote sensing, GIS, and natural resource management. He is a keen researcher and has published 37 research papers in various professional research journals of high repute and presented research papers at a number of national and international conferences and seminars. Dr. Tripathi completed the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) research project on management of degraded land using satellite remote sensing and GIS, a case study of Gauriganj block, Amethi-UP, in 2012.