Special Session 21

SPECIAL SESSION #21

Meriame Mohajane

Istituto per le Tecnologie della Costruzione, CNR, Italy

• mohajane@itc.cnr.it

Antonietta Varasano

Istituto per le Tecnologie della Costruzione, CNR, Italy

• varasano@itc.cnr.it

Sk Ajim Ali

Department of Geography, Faculty of Science Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India

• skajimali@myamu.ac.in

Deep learning (DL) models and Earth observation (EO) have been extensively used and successfully achieved promises advances results to support the management and the assessment of hazards and risks in environmental sciences , these include : flood , gully erosion , forest fire , drought and so on.

This Special session is aimed at collecting contributions, but are not limited to, in the following areas:

• Natural hazards susceptibility mapping and disaster management;
• Monitoring and mapping Natural hazards based on advances Deep learning (DL) models;
• Forecasting of catastrophic events, risk;
• Remote sensing techniques for Natural hazards mapping;
• Risk management;
• Applications with case studies.

Meriame Mohajane is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Construction Technologies Institute of the Italian National Research Council (CNR) , sede di Napoli, Italy. She holed a Ph.D degree in Remote sensing and Environment from University of Moulay Ismail, Morocco in 2021, a Master degree in Environment and Sustainable Development from University of Moulay Ismail, Morocco, an advanced Master course on Managing IoT, Data Analytics and Security (Elis Digital University , Rome – University of Messina, Italy), and a BSc degree in Biology (University of Moulay Ismail, Morocco). She conducted her research studies as a research scientist on the use of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and optical remote sensing for change detection at the Earth Observation Satellite Images Applications Laboratory (EOSIAL) of Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. She also involved in researches addressing water quality management and mitigation strategies using data mining models and Machine Learning algorithms with a combination of advanced statistical analysis. Her ongoing research focused on the exploitation of Remote sensing data including hyperspectral data (PRISMA data) and orthophotos images for the development of methods and algorithms based on Deep Learning and Machine Learning data for mapping Asbestos-cement Roofing within the Project MAAC "Mappatura Amianto Ambiente Costruito". Dr. Meriame Mohajane is the author/ co-author of scientific publications in referred international journals.

Antonietta Varasano is a researcher at the Construction Technologies Institute of the Italian National Research Council (ITC-CNR), sede di Bari. Italy. She serves as coordinator scientist for the Project MAAC "Mappatura Amianto Ambiente Costruito" for mapping asbestos-cement Roofing based on Remote sensing data and Deep learning algorithms in the region of Basilicata. In addition, she is a professor of Applied Physics for Architecture at the Department of European and Mediterranean Cultures , University of Basilicata, Matera, Italy.
Her current research interests are Remote sensing (Multispectral, Hyperspectral , Radar and SAR ), LiDAR, Deep Learning , Machine Learning and WebGIS. She is collaborating with a team of scientists and researchers on various environmental applications, including gully erosion prediction, land use / land cover assessment, and landslide susceptibility mapping. She authored and co-authored scientific publications in international journals. She serves as guest editor of "Sustainability" MDPI journal.

Sk Ajim Ali is an environmental geographer who studies environmental concerns with a focus on places, politics, and the safe management of the human and built environments. His work is conceptually focused on environmental changes in the post-colonial era and their implications for environmental sustainability in emerging nations. By concentrating on the changing humanenvironment interactions, his work explores the post-modernistic notion of unpredicted urbanisation and related challenges. His current research interests include the socio-environmental interface, geohazards; climate change; multi-hazard risk assessment; and land cover change.
Dr. Ali is a native of West Bengal, a state of India's capital Kolkata (formerly known as Calcutta) during the pre-independence. Observing and hearing first-hand historical perspectives and major environmental challenges owing to rural-urban conversion after colonisation and postindependence period, progressively attracted him toward becoming an environmental geographer. This inspired his interest in urbanisation, human habitations, and adaptations in a dynamic socio-political environment, prompting him to conduct extensive fieldwork in Kolkata for his doctoral research in Geography. His research focused on how haphazard, unplanned, and massive urban growth have strained Kolkata's urban structure and socioeconomic resources, public spaces and major affordable transportation links (road, rail, and metro), and the city's cultural and aesthetic infrastructure. He also highlighted how population growth and human behaviour have created enormous waste and related environmental problems in the city and proposed plausible solutions. Additionally, he also studied geohazards vulnerability assessment through international collaboration on different terrain of the world in order to understand environmental hazards risk and attendant issues of sustainable development. He was also employed as a lecturer at Faculty of Life Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, where he taught Environmental Studies to undergraduate students. He has contributed more than 40 scientific research papers in international journals on issues pertaining to environmental degradation, waste management and geohazards vulnerabilities. He is a reviewer of many journals published by Elsevier, Springer, Taylor & Francis, SAGE, and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). He is the author of two books on remote sensing and quantum GIS. He is also contributed as guest editor of different journal’s special issue. He is currently working as an independent researcher.