Special Issue "Maritime Environment Monitoring"

Protection and monitoring of maritime environments have become increasingly important due to several different factors. The reasons behind this increase are very heterogeneous and range from the high demand of oil-based products, leading to a growth of maritime traffic, to the increased amount of garbage produced by society, which endangers both protected and regular coastal and marine areas, and, furthermore, with the fast and great rise of migration flows arriving to Western countries. All these factors, combined with the augmented computational and storage capability of technological systems, and with an increased availability of data regarding the marine and maritime environment, has made it possible to have a range of varieties of information systems for the study, monitoring, and proactive support to decision makers. In general, these information systems respond to the needs in the development of intelligent systems dealing with the management of maritime spatial data, for applications related to either scientific research, safety, or maritime industry. This Special Issue aims to cover these various and heterogeneous aspects, related to maritime environment monitoring, bringing together researchers in their respective fields to share their experiences. The main subjects covered by this Special Issue can be summarized by the following five topics: Research and applications on maritime systems for the support of decision makers; Research on sensors and marine data acquisition and management; Research on the smart management and integration of real-time maritime heterogeneous data; Research and applications on smart interfaces for the management of real-time maritime information systems Research and applications for the support of maritime industry and related organizations. Dr. Gabriele Pieri Dr. Ovidio Salvetti Guest Editors