Special Issue Editorial: Earth Observation and Geoinformation Technologies for Sustainable Development

This editorial presents an introduction to fourteen papers published in the Special Issue of Earth Observation and Geoinformation Technologies for Sustainable Development in the Sustainability journal. Geoinformation has become increasingly important in understanding the impacts of earth observation on urban regions, the natural environment, and landscape transitions. With the advance of Geocomputational technologies, the epistemological understanding of Geographic Information Science has become a ubiquitous field to advance new tools for sustainable development and regional decision support systems [1]. Additionally, emerging active and passive sensing approaches, such as crowdsourcing, Volunteered Geographic Information [2], citizen science, participatory sensing, humans-as-sensors, as well as new techniques in fine-scale mapping [3] have allowed to leverage the prior way of monitoring and sensing our landscapes [4]. One of the main advantages corresponds to the integration of different multidisciplinary approaches for implementation in the real world situation by practitioners, scholars, and planners alike. This results in a core of better environmental management and planning strategies, nurtured by a multidisciplinary vision that stems from the nested complexity of sustainable development. In this sense, Geoformation has promptly offered leading tools for sustainable development and spatial decision support systems. The extensive demographic shifts, through population dynamics, where human activity and impacts on the fringes of urban environments, need urgent monitoring to cope with the ongoing population growth [5]. Moreover, humans have been consuming more resources than ever. Thus, spatial and temporal monitoring efforts should be carried forth, so as to achieve a better understanding of our environment and its inhabitants, and to allow for a coherent approach to sustainable development. Multidisciplinary approaches can benefit from becoming leveraged by geoinformation technologies; these approaches should be undertaken for a better and deeper understanding of human–environment interactions. Earth observation devices and geoinformation technologies, including remote sensing data, platforms, algorithms, geographic information science, and spatial analysis techniques have played a major role in monitoring the dynamics of our environment and landscape. Additionally, emerging active and passive sensing approaches, such as crowdsourcing, Volunteered Geographic Information, citizen science, participatory sensing, humans-as-sensors, etc., have allowed us to leverage the prior way of monitoring and sensing our landscapes. Both approaches provide a great deal of data and methodologies to scientists, practitioners, and planners, thus enabling a more efficient planning and design of the environment. This results in better environmental management and sustainable development and must be considered for better decision making.