T. Hutsul
The widespread use of modern types of mines equipped with anti-removal mechanisms, reduced metal content and other non-traditional materials in their construction significantly complicates the further effectiveness of humanitarian demining operations. The lack/limitation of high-quality spatial information and high requirements for the reliability of demining lead to an increase in potentially dangerous areas. All this slows down and significantly increases the cost of humanitarian demining operations and limits the possibilities for post-war recovery. The cost and time required for demining are much greater than for the manufacture and installation of mines. Despite the significant number of devices for detecting explosive objects, whose principle of operation is based on various physical laws, there is still no universal means (complex) of demining capable of reliably finding and identifying explosive objects made of various materials in different environments covering them. This motivates both governments and the scientific community to find safe, fast and accurate solutions for demining. Remote sensing is both a science and a technology that provides contactless acquisition, processing and interpretation of images based on the interaction between electromagnetic energy and the environment. The safety of deminers, efficiency, completeness of obtaining relevant spatial data and many other advantages have ensured its successful use in mine action. Currently, this assists in planning, monitoring and evaluating clearance operations, supporting the land release process and helping to measure the impact. The article provides a comprehensive overview of remote sensing technology and its capabilities for collecting geospatial data in solving various humanitarian demining tasks. Multi-platform and multi-sensor integration of remote sensing data enhances the ability to detect and verify explosive objects. In addition to creating valuable additional spatial data, it also integrates them at the level of features or decisions, which includes the integration of various features or outputs of the processing system to obtain the final product. Remote sensing also opens up prospects for identifying potentially dangerous objects. Remote sensing and geospatial image processing is a branch of geography and geoinformation science that has quickly adopted artificial intelligence methods. Equipping remote sensing platforms with various sensors significantly increases the amount of geospatial data collected, which, combined with geostatistical methods, allows for the modelling of mine risks and the supplementation of missing data for demining. Sensor-based data is the main direction of artificial intelligence development in humanitarian demining. The classification of remote sensing methods by data acquisition method is presented. The features of each method, its advantages, disadvantages and possibilities or examples of use in humanitarian demining are revealed. The possibilities of interpreting remote sensing data collected using different sensors are substantiated. Current trends in the analysis and processing of remote sensing data are outlined.