Perspectives from remote sensing to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic: A future-oriented approach

Khalid Mehmood; Yansong Bao; Sana Mushtaq; Saifullah; Muhammad Ajmal Khan; Nadeem Siddique; Muhammad Bilal; Zhang Heng; Li Huan; Muhammad Tariq; Sibtain Ahmad

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.938811

Perspectives from remote sensing to investigate the COVID-19 pandemic: A future-oriented approach

Front Public Health. 2022 Jul 26:10:938811. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.938811. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Khalid Mehmood^{1

2

3}, Yansong Bao^{1

2}, Sana Mushtaq⁴, Saifullah⁵, Muhammad Ajmal Khan⁶, Nadeem Siddique⁷, Muhammad Bilal⁸, Zhang Heng⁹, Li Huan¹⁰, Muhammad Tariq¹¹, Sibtain Ahmad¹²

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster, Ministry of Education (KLME)/Joint International Research Laboratory of Climate and Environment Change (ILCEC)/Collaborative Innovation Center on Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters (CIC-FEMD)/CMA Key Laboratory for Aerosol-Cloud-Precipitation Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China.
² School of Atmospheric Physics, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, China.
³ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China.
⁴ Nishtar Medical University, Multan, Pakistan.
⁵ Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
⁶ Deanship of Library Affairs Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
⁷ Gad and Birgit Rausing Library, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore, Pakistan.
⁸ School of Marine Sciences, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, China.
⁹ Shanghai Satellite Engineering Institute, Shanghai, China.
¹⁰ China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center, Mianyang, China.
¹¹ Department of Livestock Management, University of Agriculture, Sub-campus Toba Tek Singh, Faisalabad, Pakistan.
¹² Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Institute of Animal and Dairy Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan.

Abstract

As scientific technology and space science progress, remote sensing has emerged as an innovative solution to ease the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. To examine the research characteristics and growth trends in using remote sensing for monitoring and managing the COVID-19 research, a bibliometric analysis was conducted on the scientific documents appearing in the Scopus database. A total of 1,509 documents on this study topic were indexed between 2020 and 2022, covering 165 countries, 577 journals, 5239 institutions, and 8,616 authors. The studies related to remote sensing and COVID-19 have a significant increase of 30% with 464 articles. The United States (429 articles, 28.42% of the global output), China (295 articles, 19.54% of the global output), and the United Kingdom (174 articles, 11.53%) appeared as the top three most contributions to the literature related to remote sensing and COVID-19 research. Sustainability, Science of the Total Environment, and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health were the three most productive journals in this research field. The utmost predominant themes were COVID-19, remote sensing, spatial analysis, coronavirus, lockdown, and air pollution. The expansion of these topics appears to be associated with cross-sectional research on remote sensing, evidence-based tools, satellite mapping, and geographic information systems (GIS). Global pandemic risks will be monitored and managed much more effectively in the coming years with the use of remote sensing technology.

Keywords: COVID-19; bibliometric analysis; network analysis; remote sensing; visualization.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Communicable Disease Control
Cross-Sectional Studies
Humans
Pandemics
Remote Sensing Technology
United States