Nobuyoshi Imura has his career at Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Chiba University. He has been engaged in development of synthetic aperture radar and development of radar satellite for about 40 years, and is pursuing consistent research and development of small SAR satellite, data processing technology and so on by integrating the knowledge and experience with the research achievements that Chiba University has done.

Center for Environmental Remote Sensing of Chiba University is currently developing a compact, lightweight (100 kg class) and low cost (about 800 million yen) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite, comparing to existing SAR satellites of large size, mass of several tons and manufacturing cost of billions of yen. We will provide this compact, low cost SAR satellite and reduce the burden on society and industry. Furthermore, we expand the research fields to new data utilization fields (infrastructure monitoring, land and sea surveillance, economic index extraction, etc.) as well as remote sensing fields such as enhancement of disaster prevention and reduction function and global environmental monitoring strengthening and we aim at creating a new business field by providing high frequency observation by constellation of its small SAR satellites and by providing extracting special data processing. Particularly, it is possible to develop new products for expanding use of remote sensing technology to contribute to the creation of advanced innovative remote sensing sensors by developing a compact SAR satellite specialized for a limited mission and advanced and inexpensive sophisticated data processing technology widely for general society and industry. The frequency of developed SAR is L, C and X bands. In this paper we describe the outline of the C band small SAR satellite, satellite bus system, SAR sensor system, constellation, ground system and prototype status.

James Kurt Lein has obtained his Doctorate from Kent State University and is currently Professor of Geography at Ohio University, USA. His research focuses on Applied Geomatics with a concentration in remote sensing, environmental monitoring and land resource analysis. He has published numerous research papers and several books including Environmental Sensing: Analytic Techniques for Earth Observation (2012) and Futures Research and Environmental Sustainability: Theory and Method (2016).

Assessment and the inherently future oriented nature of sustainability decision making operate in an arena punctuated by uncertainty. As cities strive to reduce the adverse environmental aspects of urbanization there is a need to characterize existing environmental conditions to support effective planning. Urban surface frequently is characterized as an artificial landscape superimposed on the natural system. As urban patterns spread and intensity, the replacement of natural form with urban cover types has been shown to modify and degrade the functioning of natural environmental processes within and surrounding the urban footprint. Reducing the adverse environmental effects of urbanization on the natural system and preserving natural form in an urbanizing region remains a central objective in sustainability planning. One important strategy actively pursued by metropolitan areas involves urban greening. Prioritizing urban green space creation and identifying useful targets that can direct long term monitoring are essential to insure that greening agendas are contributing to the desired outcome. In this paper, remote sensed data is applied to estimate urban waste heat, calculated as a function of land surface temperature. The urban waste heat profile serves as a sustainability indicator that can be projected into the future in relation to observed trends in green space creation. The methodology employed in this study couples remote sensing techniques with cellular-based projections of green development over which waste heat patterns are calculated in a GIS environment. Through this combined methodology, green development scenarios can be critically evaluated over an extended time horizon.

Vishavjeet Singh Goraya is a student of Geoscience Engineering at University of Petroleum and Energy Studies, Dehradun, India. He has presented various papers across India and internationally he has presented the paper in 4th International conference on Geology and Geosciences. He is an Emerging Geoscientist from India.

There are three major sedimentary basins along the east coast of India, namely, the Cauvery, the Krishna-Godavari and the Mahanadi. Among these basins Krishna-Godavari (KG) Basin is located between the major rivers Krishna and Godavari and also extending offshore has attracted many oil and gas companies due to its richness in hydrocarbon potential. This block comprises an area of 1850 km2 in NE-SW trending Krishna-Godavari Basin and is located on the eastern coast of Andhra Pradesh, India. It is a proved petroliferous basin (petroleum producing basin). Among the various techniques available, the geochemical technique involving total organic content (TOC) and Rock-Eval pyrolysis are regularly being used in hydrocarbon exploration. They provide information on the kerogen type, sedimentary environment, effective source rock identification and its thermal maturity. In the present study, core samples from the deep boreholes in the Krishna-Godavari Basin are analyzed to understand the hydrocarbon scenario in parts of the basin. Based on TOC and Rock-Eval pyrolysis significantly thick, indigenous immature to early mature gas prone shales from one borehole, while non-indigenous, early mature to mature oil and gas prone shales from the second borehole. Interpreted hydrocarbon typing is supported by well-testing analysis. Break in Vitrinite Reflectance profile is also observed; the indicator of significant erosion during late Cretaceous sedimentation due to tectonic uplift. During this time an associated high heat flow causes for thermal maturation of overlying units.

Khodani Matshusa completed his Master’s from University of Venda and is currently doing his Phd studies at University of Johannesburg. He is a Scientist-Team Leader at Council for Geoscience, a state owned geoscience research organization. He has published more than 11 papers in reputed journals and has been involved in several national and internal projects.

The South African economy benefits from the exploitation of mineral resources. There is however concern about the negative legacies left through the exploitation and processing of these minerals. In order to address the negative legacies from abandoned mines, the National Government of South Africa introdueced the “Programme for the Management of Derelict and Ownerless (D&O) Mines of South Africa”. The programme aims at reducing the South African state liability with respect to abandoned mines to a negligible level through updating the existin database, field verification, risk ranking and rehabilitation prioritisation. Specialist studies are being conducted on prioritised abandoned mines to be able to determine and quantify the impacts on the environment. This is essential for the selection of the appropriate rehabilitation techniques and monitoring. The specialist studies identified within this programme include: Geotechnical investigations; Geohydrological investigations; Dust and air quality studies; Geochemical studies; Phytoremediation techniques; Environmental studies on areas impacted by acid mine draianage (AMD), subsidence and spontaneous combustion; and Hydrological assessment of abandoned mines. To address the physical threat to people and animals due to these abandoned mines, the National Government of South Africa is closing a number of dangerous mine openings. This is also aimed at preventing or reducing water ingress into the mine openings, illegal mining, accidents such falling of kids into the shafts and to increase the land usability. This article will also highlight some of the successes and improvement needed to address these challenges. Furthermore, it will also demonstrate how scientific investigations are helping in providing guidance on environmental management policies, legislation and measures to strengthen environmental compliance in South Africa. 

Tourist spatial and temporal patterns could be investigated from analysing digital and social clues that tourists leave behind their trips by either accidental or intentional purposes. When considering to tourism sustainability, spatial-temporal distribution of tourists plays an important role in strategic planning. However, tourists spatial-temporal distribution is still a neglected topic in urban tourism field. This research aims to demonstrate the potential of using rich geotagged data from Instagram to investigate and identify the spatial-temporal distribution and main tourist attractions of inbound tourists in Hong Kong. This approach is using geo-spatial data from the popular photo-sharing site which goes far beyond the cost, scale and timeliness of traditional questionnaire surveys.The method is based on exploiting over 1 million geotagged photos from over 200,000 international tourists collected over a period of one year in conjunction with exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). ESDA is a collection of GIS spatial statistical approaches that are extensively used to analyse and identify the spatial autocorrelation and heterogeneity as well as visualize hotspots regions of the data over the space. The global Moran’s I statistics of the spatial temporal distribution of inbound tourists in Hong Kong indicate the strong positive and significant autocorrelation. In addition, the Moran significant map and the Anselin Local Moran’s I (LISA statistic) reveal two significant hot spots of inbound tourists which are Central - Wanchai cluster and Tsim Sha Tsui–Mongkok cluster, other two significant attractions which are Hong Kong Disneyland and the big buddha clusters in the morning and the afternoon, and two additional regions of Hong Kong airport and shatin clusters at night. Based on the results, it’s indicated that the spatial distribution is more clustered in the evening and more dispersed during the day time. These areas consist of shopping centers, theme parks and major tourist attractions that attract majority of tourists in Hong Kong. However, there are some different significant hot spots occurred at various time scales.

Benyamin Sapiie has completed his PhD and Post-doctoral studies in Structural Geology from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. Currently, he is the Dean of Faculty of Earth Sciences and Technology, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia. His reseach interest include fault and fracture mechanics, analogue sandbox modeling, active tectonic, earthquakes and geomechanics. He has published several papers in reputed journals and has been received various awards.

Fold-Thrust-Belt (FTB) deformation is very complex due to their geometries such as low angle, stacking and thickening. Relationships between shortening and fault geometries as well as their sequences are the main important issues in understanding FTB deformation. However, in many cases is difficult to analyze using subsurface data due to the poor seismic image quality as a results of complex deformation style particularly tight folds and steep faults. Therefore, in evaluation FTB need to focus in conducting retrodeformable sequences or palinspatic reconstructions trough balancing cross-sections. The result of palinspatic reconstructions will validate using sandbox modeling. This paper is presented results of presented essential roles of Sandbox Modeling in supporting the understanding of FTB deformation. The results of the study show the importance of pre-existing structures in controlling FTB deformation styles. Others geological data such as mechanical stratigraphy thickness governed by facies and their initial slope is among the important parameter which clearly influenced in the final results of deformation. Basement configuration is one of the parameters seems to have major impact in fault styles such as thin-skinned versus thick-skinned FTB. Understanding these initial parameters conditions are very important issue in order to have the best modeling results. The result of this study was validated using 2D seismic data from Eastern Indonesia which consider as the main frontier exploration target area. This exercise is very important in order to explore FTB hydrocarbon potential particularly related to trap integrity, hydrocarbon maturation and migration issue as well as reservoir porosity.

Aruna Saxena has PhD in Architecture using Remote Sensing and GIS technology in 2002. She did Specialization in Advance Remote Sensing and GIS from International Institute of Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC), Enschede, the Netherlands in 2006. She has published more about 70 research papers, guided 5 PhD thesis, 12 MTech thesis, authored one textbook on GIS and spatial data published in July 2008, organized various training programs and conferences, and prepared educational films

In our present topic, ant colony optimization (ACO) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) based optimization techniques have been applied to perform satellite image classification with fewer amounts of discontinuity, conflicts and constraint of imprecise knowledge and evaluation of data. Land cover analysis by virtue of image classification are always associated with certain amount of vagueness, uncertainty and ambiguity during the classification from the remotely sensed data. In the present scenario, we are able to presents a hybrid ACO/PSO technique that are extracted through expert knowledge for a more focused EOS satellite image classification. This abstract investigates the principle of traditional rule mining, which will produce more non-supplementary candidate sets when it reads data into candidate items. Especially, when it deals with massive data, if the minimum support and minimum confidence are relatively small, combinatorial explosion of common item sets will occur and computational power and storage space required are likely to exceed the limits of machine. ACO/PSO optimization algorithm based on conventional ant-miner and swarm optimization algorithm is proposed and is used in rules mining for supervised clustering of digital number (DN) values

in satellite images. Measurement formula of effectiveness of the rules is improved and pheromone concentration update strategy is also carried out. The experiment results show that execution time of proposed algorithm is lower than traditional algorithm and has better execution time and accuracy for EOS image.

Ernest Berkman has graduated from the Colorado School of Mines in Geophysical Engineering, 1958. He has worked for Mobil Oil for 20 years and then started EMEX. At EMEX, his experience includes prospect analysis and regional geological/geophysical studies including reflection, gravity, magnetics, MT, refraction analysis, in North America and worldwide; plus a lot of shallow seismic for coal mine development and site characterization. Interpretation background includes site characterization, and technical writing, modeling, quality control, project and team management, industrial teaching, and mentoring. He has been a Member of the SEG since 1955. He has 28 geological and geophysical papers.

In 1997, Tsable River Coal Company owned the Raven coal project; in 2006, it was owned by Compliance Energy. The seismic investigation for both companies was conducted by Emerald Exploration Consultants, Inc. (EMEX). It consisted of a series of seismic lines totaling 43 km. The goal was to characterize the coal beds and any subsurface features that might affect the planned underground mine plan. In 2008, Compliance Energy formed the Comox Joint Venture which was made up of Compliance Energy which controlled 60%, 20% by I-Comox Coal Inc. and 20% by LG International Investments, Canada Ltd. It was to receive up to $500,000,000 in funding from the minority partners. In 2009, additional core drilling was undertaken, and this data was reviewed by EMEX in 2010. In 2016, after spending over $25,000,000 and failing to obtain the necessary permits all debts were paid and the joint venture and company was dissolved. The presentation deals with the location, seismic data, geology, geologic correlation, synthetic seismograms and the utilization of the newest seismic data display techniques. The reflectors are interpreted to be caused by coal/rock interfaces with reflections from rock/rock interfaces being infrequent. The data indicates the presence of multiple thrust faulted coal seams, with beds dipping to the northeast. Erosional surfaces and lithologic changes related to variations in the coal zone are present. The presence of several sonic logs makes correlation of the seismic reflectors to specific coal seams clear cut. The presence of shallow coal amenable to strip mining is noted.

Nepal C Dey has completed his PhD from Tottori University, Japan after completion of MSc in Water Resources Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka. He is the Senior Research Fellow of Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC, a premier #1 NGO in the world. He has relatively a long experience in research, teaching and consultancy on water and environmental issues with public, private and UN organizations. He is a Professional in Water Resources Engineering. He has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals and book chapters and has been serving as an Editorial Board Member of repute. His research interest includes: remote sensing in environment and sustainability of water resources.

Rapid expansion of irrigated agriculture and decline of rainfall mainly in the dry period have resulted in a decline in the groundwater table and depletion of groundwater stores in many countries including Bangladesh. We explored the application of remote sensing information for assessing the effects of excess water on water productivity and irrigation costs for BRRI dhan 28 (a common variety of dry season (boro) rice). The excess water lifted in five selected sub-districts was calculated using data on the gross irrigation water requirement (GIWR) and total lifted water for irrigation using remote sensing information, empirical models and direct method.GIWR ranged from 139.8 to 204.2 million m3 considering a conveyance and distribution loss of 10% of total. On average, 80% of the lifted water was necessary to meet irrigation water requirements; the remaining fifth was termed “excess water”. The cost of excess water was estimated to be $28.2-$90.8 per hectare from deep tubewells and $97.0-$129.4 per hectare from shallow tubewells. Irrigation costs were reduced by about 25% and average yields increased by 8.1% to 13.7% when the Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) method was used. Use of excess water in AWD fields was also much lower than in traditional fields in all sub-districts. On average, only 10% excess water to GIWR was lifted when AWD method followed. However, modern water management technologies like AWD are likely to be less effective unless volumetric irrigation methods are used. Awareness campaigns and advocacy of modern irrigation management concepts such as low water demanding high value crops, volumetric water charging system can improve water-use efficiency by preventing excess groundwater use and reduce associated costs.

Sheila Lynch-Benttinen has completed her Master’s degree from Harvard University. She is the Executive Director of The Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium, an organization in Boston, MA. She is an independent Researcher.

The Blue-Red Grace Theorem posits that gravity data taken from two data collecting space satellites (The GRACE project, NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) of Earth's crust, is data taken far enough away, as predicted by Einstein, to not adhere to classical mechanics, but to general relativity, with gravity being the warping of space time. The theorem is based on Einstein's insight into what gravity is, the warping of space-time fabric. Einstein's field equations are used by astrophysicists to adjust small movement in space, such as GPS data, to fit relativity, which are small adjustments, but gravity data taken of earth from space by microwave sensing theoretically shows mass warping space/time. The movement of mass is recorded as blue and the accretion of mass is recorded as red in the GRACE maps of the globe produced by NASA. The data shows ancient very large movements of mass warping space/time that point to ancient geological events. Time is relative in the data. The gravity data, according to the theorem, shows ancient movements of mass in blue associated with volcanoes, bolides, plate tectonics, and also mass accretion.

Nepal C Dey has completed his PhD from Tottori University, Japan after completion of MSc in Water Resources Engineering from Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka. He is the Senior Research Fellow of Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC, a premier #1 NGO in the world. He has relatively a long experience in research, teaching and consultancy on water and environmental issues with public, private and UN organizations. He is Professional in Water Resources Engineering. He has published more than 50 papers in reputed journals and book chapters and has been serving as an Editorial Board Member of repute. His research interest includes: remote sensing in environment and sustainability of water resources.

The recent flash flood in April 2017 in the northeast region, triggered by heavy rainfall, has breached parts of embankments and resulted in huge loss of asset and income of haor dwellers. The flood has not only damaged boro crop, which is the only seasonal rice crop that farmers grow annually, but also has affected the overall livelihoods of haor dwellers. The aim of the study was to investigate the impact of flash flood’17 on livelihood including food habit of haor dwellers. One of the study objectives was to understand the effectiveness of government as well as BRAC’s support during flood. The study covered 62 villages of 31 unions under 6 districts with a total of 1845 households. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in the study. Results show that household heads who were employed with agricultural activities before the flood (52%) became unemployed (21%) after the flood. Respondents reported that they changed their usual food habits, roughly one-third of households consumed two instead of three meals per day, 53% adapted consuming to less food and 16% had low nutritious food due to the scarcity of food. The lack of money and loss of main boro crop were the main contributing factors of crisis for haor dwellers. To reduce the vulnerability and improve livelihood of the victims, 47% and 28% of the victims received support from BRAC and Government emergency responses respectively within three weeks of flood. This depicted that BRAC’s emergency response mechanism to the affected population was relatively more efficient and faster in a humanitarian crisis like flood. Ensuring availability of nutritious food for the affected population to escape from stunting due to inadequacy of food intake for many days after the flood should be ensured. As livelihood with agricultural activities were being affected most of the years, alternative employment opportunities, such as skills development training for youth, e.g. driving, electrical, tailoring and garments,

Nashon J Adero is researching on mine surveying (PhD) at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany. He has acquired cross-sector experience in the surveying and mapping industry, public service and academia. He has held positions of Tunnel Surveyor, Policy Analyst at Kenya’s leading public policy think tank, and Manager in the Geomatics industry. He lectures on Surveying and GIS at Taita Taveta University, Kenya. His publications have focused on environmental modelling, spatial planning and cross-cutting policy research. He is a member of professional bodies and networks, including the Institution of Surveyors of Kenya (ISK), System Dynamics Society, and Kenya DAAD Scholars Association.

Kenya enacted a new Mining Act in 2016, replacing the old one of 1940. Considered Africa’s most progressive mining law, the Act seeks to transform Kenya’s mining sector by making key provisions for transparency and inclusivity in managing the critical issues of land, environment, benefits sharing, stakeholder rights and community expectations. Under Kenya Vision 2030, the share of mining in the GDP should increase from 1% to double digits. Looking beyond a project-level scale is critical to operationalizing progressive mining regulations, since decision makers need to visualize regional dynamics and recognize the big picture in the environment. These facts motivate a study on optimizing mine planning by integrating geospatial models into system dynamics. The background study justifying this research revealed a weak integration of spatial metrics into the existing decision support models. A case study of Kenya’s mineral and conservation belt in Taita Taveta County is used to demonstrate how integrating geospatial models into system dynamics can enhance decisions across extensive spatial and temporal scales. Data layers on topography, cadastre, human settlements, mining hotspots and natural resources constitute the spatial criteria, captured using ground surveying and remote sensing techniques. Weighted spatial and regulatory criteria are integrated to develop a dynamic systems model that supports decisions on measures and scenario simulations for sustainable mining practices and policies. GIS is applied to achieve spatial integrity and transparency in operationalizing the regulations, hence generating location-specific insights for enhanced utility of model-based systems engineering through the stages of a mine’s life cycle.

A E Radwan is a PhD student and Geologist at Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company which is a joint venture of British Petroleum, Egypt. He has published more than 5 papers in reputed journals. He has participated with SEG, AAPG and SPE and in a lot of conferences in Europe and Egypt. He volunteered some organizations in Egypt related to Science and Education.

Determination of hydrocarbon type in the lack of pressure gradients and the absence of sonic log is the main challenge in the zone of interest, In this paper, we used well logging relations between density and sonic in the wells which have sonic logs at the zone of interest to create synthetic sonic log, secondly by applying special petrophysical studies to help for estimation of hydrocarbon type. Two empirical equations were derived then these extracted empirical equations were applied to predict a sonic synthetic log for the two wells under investigation (unknown) which have no recorded sonic logs these are (B and C) wells. Crossplot technique was used to estimate the hydrocarbon type in the zone of interest using the synthetic sonic curve, original density curve, original neutron curve. The results of this study revealed that firstly the synthetic logs play a great role in solving of petrophysical and geological problems, secondly, the obtained synthetic sonic log from the derived empirical equations makes a sense with lithology and other logs (neutron and gamma) and it is recommended to be used in Badri field for the zone of interest level, thirdly, the synthetic sonic log, in corporation with the density and the neutron logs with the crossplots can help for estimation of fluid type. The final result that the most likely hydrocarbon type in well (B) is an oil zone while it is a gas zone signature in well (C).

Sergey Gubanov has completed his Bachelor’s degree program “Exploitation and Maintenance of Oil Production Facilities”, at Oil-Technological Department. In 2017, he has completed his Master’s degree program in Material Engineering and Technology of Materials, summa cum laude. From the first course, he took part in different workshops, contests, conferences (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Sochi, Sakhalin and other cities). During his study, he has published 13 scientific works. He is also a Co-author of the Russian Federation patent â„– 2607486. He has received the President’s and Governor’s award and the Alabin’s award. Since 2015, he is a

realizer of the Russian Scientific Foundation grant “Method of high-viscosity oil deposits development with possibility of periodic formation heating”. Now, he works as an Assistant Professor at Samara State Technical University, “Oil and gas field development and operation” Department. He conducts laboratory and practical classes on the subject "underground hydromechanics of hydrocarbons".

Extraction and designing of systems for the development of high-viscosity oil is one of the most perspective direction of development of the fuel and energy complex. During the last few decades, deposits have been explored and introduced into the world, many of which was presented by deposits of oil with high viscosity. As a rule, oils of this class have pronounced rheological properties due to the content of high-molecular components. Experimental studies have proved the ability of high-viscosity oil to display at flow the properties typical of non-Newtonian systems. The relationship between pressure gradient and rate of movement in real reservoirs may be non-linear due to the interaction of asphaltenes and resins, forming the plastic structure in the oil. The impact of the restructuring processes on the viscosity of the oil and the possibility of Darcy’s law violation are not considered in most of the known hydrodynamic simulations. The authors of the article justified the analytical model of the pseudostationary flow of non-linear viscoplastic oil to the vertical well with a random configuration of the drainage area. The result of the study is the choice of the system of reservoir stimulation, which allows effective regulation of the structural and mechanical properties of high-viscosity oil. Namely, periodic formation heating with help of grid wells with dual-well system. The effect is reached by putting of solid fuel source, located

in proximity to the impact object. The technical solution that supposes formation exposing with a dual-well system aims at recurrent layer warm-up with the help of a high-temperature solid-fuel or liquid source located in the bottom-hole zone of the vertical well bore and production of formation water through the additional lateral hole located within the warm-up radius outside the zone of expected rock damage. Small-sized subsurface pumping equipment is run in the hole, e.g. with pump location in the lateral hole. The method proposed by the authors can be useful for small deposits of high-viscosity oil.