Future perspectives of microwave imaging with application to multi-parameter POLSAR remote sensing and geophysical stress-change monitoring

The Indonesian Islands stretch over almost four time zones along the equatorial belt in between +/- 11* latitude, and its lush vegetation along with its mineral resources are exposed to increasing natural hazards like volcano eruptions, earthquakes and seaquakes with ensuing tsunami, cyclones with devastating floods plus ruthless mineral mining; thus, disaster assessment and prevention has become an ever more pressing topic of top priority. Current ground-based disaster damage assessment methods are cumbersome and costly due to sudden sporadic hazard occurrences; and local point measurements are not representative of larger affected regions. Due to the strong spatial and temporal dynamics of geo/bio-environmental constituents frequent continual observations are necessary for which satellite remote sensing and stress change monitoring provide the sought for repetitive monitoring capability and synoptic coverage.