lable at ScienceDirect

Space Policy 27 (2011) 62

Contents lists avai

Space Policy

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/spacepol

Book Review

Remote Sensing from Space: Supporting International Peace andSecurity, B. Jasani, M. Pesaresi, S. Schneiderbrauer, G. Zeug(Eds.). Springer, Berlin, 2009 (297 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4020-8483-6)

This book grew out of a project entitled Global Monitoring forStability and Security (GMOSS) funded by the Sixth Framework Pro-gramme of the European Commission (EC) at a level of some €6million. The GMOSS project was a network of excellence withinthe overall European initiative on Global Monitoring for Environ-ment and Security (GMES) and as a network drew together 22 part-ners and 11 associate members from around Europe. The aim of thebook is “to provide an initial introduction to the numerous capabil-ities that exist in Europe to enhance and analyse [remote sensing]imagery for the strengthening of European security”, and as suchit is welcome to have the book published in the open literaturerather than the GMOSS project reports being confined to theshelves of the European Commission and the many project part-ners. The book has 16 chapters written by a total of 69 authors,with the chapters divided into four sections: 1) security, crisesand the role of Earth observation; 2) the contribution of GMOSSin the context of GMES and security; 3) image processing toolsfor security applications; and 4) security applications.

The best parts of the book are the examples and illustrations ofthe use of remote sensing (or Earth observation) image data insecurity case studies. These examples include remote sensingimages of a refugee camp in Darfur, Sudan, of a nuclear researchsite near Esfahan, Iran, the Tehran research reactor and of oil fieldsin Iraq, images showing coastal change in Indonesia following the2004 tsunami, and illustrating damage following the Bam, Iranearthquake of 2003. The spatial scales used show a wide rangefrom sub-metre spatial resolution through to the use of MeteosatSecond Generation images of Iraq at a spatial resolution of over1 km. In all these cases the examples are useful in relation to theaim of the book by bringing together and illustrating the capabil-ities to use Earth observation data for security applications.

However, the book seems not to have escaped the shackles of itsorigins. It reads as a set of poorly digested working papers that the

doi:10.1016/j.spacepol.2010.12.004

various authors have created for the GMOSS project. The problemsstart with the title. The headline title is “Remote sensing fromspace”, but the book is not about remote sensing from space, it isabout the use of remote sensing imagery to provide support to secu-rity applications. A book on remote sensing from space would havea completely different objective and structure. The oddness keepscontinuing throughout the book. It is littered with errors – typo-graphical, grammatical, spelling, factual and semantics. It is oftenincoherent and keeps repeating a description of the GMOSS projectas though the project itself were the object of the book rather thanthe production of a book on the use of remote sensing for securityapplications. This problem has its origins in the EC’s requirementsfor projects, and sadly the needs of project reporting have persistedinto a book which is often superficial, sometimes degenerates intolists (see Chapter ten) andwhose authors seldomhaveadeepunder-standing of their subject matter. Examples are legion but the mate-rial on radar shows only the smallest understanding of thetechnology and its application. There are two chapters that shouldnot have been included at all, yet show the reporting requirementsof a project that should not have been allowed to flow through toa book: Chapter five is a summary of two GMOSS summer schoolswith (unbelievably) colour pictures of participants standing around,while Chapter six describes game theory and scenario modellingthat was supposed to be implemented in the GMOSS project butdid not take place. There is probably a book in there fighting to getout, but it needed a coherent job of editing the GMOSS projectreports into something that is worth reading. There is no excusefor the myriad of errors – at least one per page – but, more funda-mentally, the subject matter needs to be rewritten into a coherentaccount of the use of remote sensing data for security applications.

Ray HarrisDepartment of Geography, University College London, Gower Street,

London WC1E 6BT, UKE-mail address: ray.harris@ucl.ac.uk

Available online 26 January 2011