GIS and Remote Sensing in Environmental Risk Assessment

Abstract

The existence, well-being, and sustainable development of the global economy hinges upon the state of the earth’s environment. Effective environmental risk assessment and management issues have become increasingly important. With the ever-growing global population and expanding economic development, we consume more natural resources, produce more waste, and develop more areas into the regions that are prone to environmental risks. Although humans have interacted with the environment for thousands of years, environmental risk assessment and management is only a recent research undertaking. As the industrialization has made the human-environment interactions more dynamic and complex, the increased environmental risks have propelled and compelled people to use technologies for identifying and solving problems. The earliest global environmental applications of remote sensing and GIS technologies began in the 1960s, particularly marked by the successful launch of the TIROS- 1, the first meteorological satellite, and the development of computer-based geographic information systems (GIS). The story Silent Spring (Carson, 1962) awoke the public’s environmental consciousness and promoted the public demands for governments to set up environmental protection policies and research priorities. The birth of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1970 set the stage for modern environment risk assessment. The launch of the LANDSAT program in 1972 created a new way for monitoring global land use and land cover changes (Foley, 1999; Goward, Masek, Williams, Irons, & Thompson, 2001).