Biographical note

Pravat Kumar Shit is an Assistant Professor at the PG Department of Geography, Raja N. L. Khan Women’s College (Autonomous), West Bengal, India. He received his M.Sc & Ph.D. degrees in Geography from Vidyasagar University and PG Diploma in Remote Sensing & GIS from Sambalpur University. His research interests include applied geomorphology, soil erosion, groundwater, forest resources, wetland ecosystem, environmental contaminants & pollution, and natural resources mapping & modelling. He has published ten books (eight books in Springer) and more than 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals.  He is currently the editor of the GIScience and Geo-environmental Modelling (GGM) Book Series, Springer-Nature.

Hamid Reza Pourghasemi is an Associate Professor of Watershed Management Engineering in the College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Iran. He has a B.Sc. in Watershed Management Engineering from the University of Gorgan (2004), Iran; an M.Sc. in Watershed Management Engineering from Tarbiat Modares University (2008), Iran; and a PhD. in Watershed Management Engineering from the same University (Feb 2014). His main research interests are GIS-based spatial modeling using machine learning/data mining techniques in different fields such as landslide, flood, gully erosion, forest fire, land subsidence, species distribution modeling, and groundwater/hydrology. Also, Hamid Reza works on multi-criteria decision-making methods in natural resources and environment. He has published more than 170 peer-reviewed papers in high-quality journals and four books in Springer and Elsevier as Editor. Also, he is an active reviewer in more of 75 international journals.

Gouri Sankar Bhunia received his Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta, India, in 2015. His Ph.D. dissertation work focused on disease transmission modelling using geospatial technology. His research interests include health geography, environmental modeling, risk assessment, data mining, urban planning, and information retrieval using geospatial technology. He is an Associate Editor and on the editorial boards of three international journal in Health GIS and Geosciences. Currently, he is involved various Smart City Planning programme in India. He is also working as a visiting faculty in a private university of West Bengal. He has worked as a ‘Resource Scientist’ in Bihar Remote Sensing Application Centre, Patna (Bihar, India). He is the recipient of the Senior Research Fellow (SRF) from Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (ICMR, India) and has contributed to multiple research programs kala-azar disease transmission modeling, development of customized GIS software for kala-azar ‘risk’ and ‘non-risk’ area, and entomological study. He has published more than 60 paper in in reputed peer-reviewed national and international journal and three books in Springer.

Pulakesh Das is currently work in World Resources Institute India (WRII), New Delhi India. Previously, he was teaching as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Remote Sensing & GIS, Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India. He has received his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institution of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India in July 2019. He completed his M.Sc (2012) in Remote Sensing & GIS and B.Sc (2010) in Physics from the Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal, India. His primary research area includes Land Use Forest Cover (LUFC) modeling, Hydrological Modeling, Forest Cover Dynamics and Climate Change, Digital Image Processing, Microwave Remote Sensing for Soil Moisture and Forest Biomass Estimation, Plant Biophysical Characterization, etc. He has published more than 15 research articles in reputed peer-reviewed journals and 6 book chapters.

Narsimha Adimalla received a Ph.D. from University College of Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad, India in 2012.His Ph.D. dissertation work focused on Geochemistry of groundwater Basara area, Adilabad district, Andhra Pradesh. His research interests include groundwater contaminations, environmental modelling, risk assessment, natural resources mapping and modelling, data mining and information retrieval using Geospatial technology. Now, he is working as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Chang’an University, China.  Dr. Adimalla has published more than 60 articles in various journals in Scopus indexed.