Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing Techniques to Reduce the Impact of Natural Disasters in Smart Cities

Nowadays, many modern cities have become extremely vulnerable to natural disasters because of their increasing complexity and impacts of climate change. At the same time, the adaptation of scientific methods to the civil protection mechanism and the diffusion of their results to the authorities and citizens, remains a challenge and in some cases, is not achievable. The main objective of this study is to provide an overview of the potentialities of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, to incorporate relative methods and disseminate their results in an efficient and comprehensive way. Through characteristic examples, the use of GIS and remote sensing techniques, to produce relative webtools and interactive maps, which can be subsequently integrated in smart cities’ geoportals easily accessible from smartphones and personal computers, is highlighted. Moreover, it is analyzed how that kind of geoportals, can be combined to provide an effective and completed management of the natural disasters and simultaneously to defuse the generated knowledge along with other relative viable information to the public.