Remote sensing is the technology of acquiring information about the environment through interpreting energy patterns recorded by sensors mounted on various aerospace platforms. While this technology has traditionally been the colony of geoscience and national security communities, its relatively recent applications to the urban environment (urban remote sensing) have been predominately driven by the innovations in the broad arena of Earth Observation and the need to derive critical information on cities in through remote sensing in support of urban planning activities and the scientific research on socio-environmental dynamics and sustainability.
My first edition of Urban Remote Sensing ( https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Urban+Remote+Sensing%3A+Monitoring%2C+Synthesis+and+Modeling+in+the+Urban+Environment-p-9780470749586 ) published in 2011 was primarily an outcome of my decade-long efforts promoting urban remote sensing research through organizing thematic paper sessions at the annual meetings of American Association of Geographers (AAG). This text is the first book written with a broad vision of urban remote sensing focusing on the development of remote sensing technology for monitoring, synthesis, and modeling in the urban environment. It has received very positive reviews and has been widely adopted as a textbook on the subject. Additionally, this volume has been translated into Chinese and was published by China’s Higher Education Press in 2014.
The time is ripe for a new edition on urban remote sensing after one decade of
publishing the first version. My second edition ( https://www.wiley.com/en-
us/Urban+Remote+Sensing%3A+Monitoring%2C+Synthesis+and+Modeling+in+the+Urban+Environment%2C+2nd+Edition-p-9781119625858 ), which is just published this month (October 2021), is a ‘state-of-the-art’ review of the essential and emerging research areas in urban remote sensing including sensors, techniques, and applications, especially some critical issues that are shifting the research directions. Chapters are written by national and international leading scholars from multiple disciplines, with case studies predominately drawn from North America and Europe. This book will appeal to a wide readership including upper-division undergraduate and graduate students, researchers, and professionals in the fields of remote sensing, geographic information science, geography, urban planning, environmental science, global change science, and sustainability science.
Dr. Xiaojun Yang is a Professor of Geography at Florida State University. His research interests include Remote sensing, GIS, urban ecology and land change science, and applied geomorphology and geohazards. You can learn more about Dr. Yang here.
Contributed by Xiaojun Yang, Professor of Geography, College of Social Sciences and
Public Policy, Florida State University; Personal website: https://myweb.fsu.edu/xyang/
Wicked Problems, Wicked Solutions 