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The phenomenon known as urban heat islands (UHIs) is becoming more common and widespread, especially in large cities and metropolises around the world. The main cause of these temperature variations between the city center and the suburbs is the replacement of large tracts of natural land with artificial (built-up) surfaces that absorb solar heat and radiate it back at night. UHIs have been the subject of numerous studies, most of which were about defining the main characteristics, factors, indexes, etc., of UHIs using remote sensing technologies or about determining mitigating activities. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the literature, as well as a bibliometric analysis, to discover research trends related to the application of decision support systems and multi-criteria decision-making for UHI management, with a special emphasis on fuzzy theory. Data collection is conducted using the Scopus bibliographic database. Throughout the literature review, it was found that there were not many studies on multi-criteria analysis and decision support system applications regarding UHIs. The fuzzy theory application was also reviewed, resulting in only a few references. However, this topic is current, with an increase in published papers, and authors see this as an opportunity for improvement and further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mines remaining from the Homeland War are a huge problem in Croatia. The joint work of experts in humanitarian demining and military doctrines in certain geographical areas, and scientists of various profiles, has resulted in a concept for producing mine danger maps, which show areas and levels of potential hazards from mines, i.e. suspected hazardous areas. This paper presents the concept for producing mine danger maps for a suspected hazardous area (Svilaja, Croatia). The input data comprise information stored in mine information systems and additional data collected on the suspected hazardous area (e.g. bunkers and shelters for tanks, artillery and people). The resulting maps () seek to improve the identification of areas where there is no threat so that parts of suspected hazardous areas can be proposed for mine reduction, or suspected hazardous areas can be better defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Advanced Intelligence Decision Support System (AIDSS) is the first mine action technology in humanitarian demining to combine remote sensing and data fusion methods with advanced surveillance and reconnaissance in a successful operational system. It aims to provide a reliable, efficient tool to support the process of making decisions about suspected hazardous areas, based on the methodology scientifically developed and validated in the FP5 SMART project. The system was developed through Technology Project TP-006/0007-01, supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, and deployed in operations in several suspected hazardous areas in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2008 and 2016. It was upgraded in the TIRAMISU project, and its name changed to TIRAMISU Advanced Intelligence Decision Support System. Gaps identified by end-users and system operators were filled in. Among the main results were innovations for generating mine danger maps. In this paper, only the structure of the system and its potential application in non-technical surveys as part of humanitarian demining are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Toolbox implementation for removal of antipersonnel mines, submunitions and unexploded ordnance (TIRAMISU) Advanced Intelligence Decision Support System is an operational system proposed to Mine Action Centres worldwide for conducting non-technical surveys in humanitarian demining. The system consists of three modules, one of which is the module for data acquisition introduced and described in this study. The module has been designed, produced, improved, used and operationally tested and validated on several platforms (helicopters, remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) and a blimp), with various sensors and acquisition units (Global Positioning System (GPS) and inertial measurement unit) in a variety of combinations for additional data acquisition from deep inside a suspected hazardous area. For the purposes of aerial data acquisition over a suspected hazardous area, the use of multiple sensors such as visible digital cameras and multi-spectral visible, near infrared (VNIR), hyperspectral VNIR and thermal infrared sensors are of benefit, because they display the scene in different ways. Off-the-shelf equipment and software were mostly used, but some specific equipment, such as sensor pods, was developed and also some software solutions for data acquisition and pre-processing (transforming hyperspectral line scanner data into hyperspectral images, and producing hyperspectral cubes). The technical stability and robustness of the module were confirmed by operationally testing and evaluating the systems on the aforementioned platforms and missions in several actual suspected hazardous areas in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, between 2001 and 2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]