Humanitarian Demining

Abstract

United Nation Department of Human Affairs (UNDHA) assesses that there are more than 100 million mines that are scattered across the world and pose significant hazards in more than 68 countries. The international Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) estimates that the casualty rate from landmines currently exceeds 26,000 persons every year. It is estimated that more than 800 persons are killed and 1,200 maimed each month by landmines around the world. Humanitarian demining demands that all the landmines (especially AP mines) and ERW affecting the places where ordinary people live must be cleared, and their safety in areas that have been cleared must be guaranteed. Innovative solutions and technologies are required and hence this book is coming out to address and deal with the problems, difficulties, priorities, development of sensing and demining technologies and the technological and research challenges. This book reports on the state of the art research and development findings and results. The content of the book has been structured into three technical research sections with total of 16 chapters written by well recognized researchers in the field worldwide. The main topics of these three technical research sections are: Humanitarian Demining: the Technology and the Research Challenges (Chapters 1 and 2), Sensors and Detection Techniques for Humanitarian Demining (Chapters 3 to 8), and Robotics and Flexible Mechanisms for Humanitarian Demining respectively (Chapters 9 to 16).