Message from the Editor for December 2022 Issue

Abstract

Greetings from the team of the International Journal of Geoinformatics (IJG). The year 2022 has been relatively better than the years 2020 and 2021 which have seen havoc of Covid 19 pandemic. I pray that the year 2023 to be much better and more productive.

Volume 18 and issue number 6 is in front of you. These long 18 years have seen many improvements in IJG such as growing 4 issues per year to 6 issues from the year 2020. IJG is indexed in many databases and bigger success came as it got included in the SCOPUS in 2016. Due to Covid 19, there was a disruption in printing and posting from the beginning of 2020, so it was changed to completely online and it gave it much more readability. We opened some papers as Open Access in 2020 but since 2022 it became 100 percent Open Access and also we got it in DOI. This is a major step in my opinion to enhance its reach in the scientific community as it can be freely read, cited, and downloaded. Now, I would like to inform you that the management of Geoinformatics International is going to publish 12 issues rather than 6. It means publication will be much faster and more scientists/ academicians will be able to publish their papers without delays.

This issue contains papers on land cover cloud analytics -global to regional insights. Sentinel-1 interferometric analysis for Earthquake deformation detection is attempted by one researcher. Road surface pothole assessment by mobile mapping and CNN is interesting and may be used by transportation engineering experts. Researchers have also contributed papers on urban heat islands (UHI), automated digital elevation models using LiDAR data, and rule-based learning. Groundwater depletion is a major issue and I am happy that after a long time a paper is contributed using WetPass model. There is another paper on the novel approach for the generalization of the process chain of optical satellite images based on knowledge capitalization. Finally, there is a very useful paper on GNSS precise point positioning using online and offline software. I wish a happy reading of these papers to you and invite you to contribute more papers in some innovative areas related to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the year 2023.

I wish to draw your attention to another very special snowfall hazard in December 2022 in the New York, United States.  This is the heaviest snowstorm of the last two generations as recalled by the citizens which have claimed many lives and paralyzed the lives of millions. Astonishingly, the Southeastern USA is experiencing coastal flooding due to King Tides and huge damage to the properties.  United Nations is emphasizing sustainability goals to be achieved by 2030. Climate change and its impact are shaking the masses miserably and efforts to make the Earth sustainable seems to be too few and commitments need immediate reinforcement to achieve targets. Let’s make a commitment to ourselves to make students, and young researchers aware and motivate them to work on SDG-related issues for a better sustainable Earth. There is a lot to be understood and implemented scientifically.

Best wishes to you and your family members for a happy and prosperous new year 2023.