Remote Sensing for International Peace and Security: Its Role and Implications

TLDR

Remote sensing has rapidly expanded over the past two decades, providing satellite-based access to inaccessible terrains, aiding humanitarian and conflict monitoring efforts, while challenges such as sensor variability, cost, resolution, and ground‑truth difficulties remain. This review examines how remote sensing can complement international peace and security activities by providing objective near‑real‑time insights, and it identifies future challenges that may limit its applicability. The review first surveys major research concepts and implementations of remote sensing techniques for peace and security, presenting a meta‑analysis of how advanced sensor capabilities support these applications. The review demonstrates that remote sensing supports diverse peace and security functions, including refugee relief, armed conflict monitoring, genocide tracking, legal evidence, and human rights assessment.

Abstract

Remote sensing technology has seen a massive rise in popularity over the last two decades, becoming an integral part of our lives. Space-based satellite technologies facilitated access to the inaccessible terrains, helped humanitarian teams, support complex emergencies, and contributed to monitoring and verifying conflict zones. The scoping phase of this review investigated the utility of the role of remote sensing application to complement international peace and security activities owing to their ability to provide objective near real-time insights at the ground level. The first part of this review looks into the major research concepts and implementation of remote sensing-based techniques for international peace and security applications and presented a meta-analysis on how advanced sensor capabilities can support various aspects of peace and security. With key examples, we demonstrated how this technology assemblage enacts multiple versions of peace and security: for refugee relief operations, in armed conflicts monitoring, tracking acts of genocide, providing evidence in courts of law, and assessing contravention in human rights. The second part of this review anticipates future challenges that can hinder the applicative capabilities of remote sensing in peace and security. Varying types of sensors pose discrepancies in image classifications and issues like cost, resolution, and difficulty of ground-truth in conflict areas. With emerging technologies and sufficient secondary resources available, remote sensing plays a vital operational tool in conflict-affected areas by supporting an extensive diversity in public policy actions for peacekeeping processes.