Humanitarian Demining Action Plan

Abstract

The presence of landmines and Explosive Remnants of War (ERW) in a place represents a major threat to civlian and affects the rebuilding process and the life of the people at that place. Hence, one of the fundamental goals of humanitarian demining is to detect and clear all forms of danger from infected areas efficiently, reliably and as safely and as rapidly as possible while keeping cost minimized. Although demining has been given top priority, currently mine’s clearing operation is a dangerous, complex, time consuming, slow, labor-intensive, and costly operation. The currently available technologies are not suited to achieve the objectives of humanitarian demining. In the context of humanitarian demining it is essential to have a reliable and accurate sensor and/or an integration of heterogeneous/ homogeneous sensors with efficient and reliable data fusion and processing technique that can quickly discriminates mines from innocuous buried objects. In addition, it is necessary to overcome the constrain on the resources by developing innovative, cost effective and practical technology inspired by locality and real minefield needs to help in speeding up the demining process and enhance accuracy, productivity, operation and personnel safety, achieve higher quality of the service, and contribute to local economy.This chapter presents the facts and problems associated with landmines and their impact on health, economy, land and environment along with the difficulties in detecting and removing them. It highlights the main requirements for humanitarian demining action plan and list up solutions and priorities.Then, it presents the challenges facing technological development in different directions and concludes with the suitable actions to save human and environment from such complex problem facing humanity.