Signals and images in sea technologies

Life below water is the 14th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) envisaged by the United Nations and is aimed at conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. It is not difficult to argue that Signals and Image technologies may play an essential role in achieving the foreseen targets linked to SDG 14. Indeed, besides increasing general knowledge of ocean health by means of data analysis, methodologies based on signal and image processing can be helpful in environmental monitoring, in protecting and restoring ecosystems, in finding new sensor technologies for green routing and eco-friendly ships, in providing tools for implementing best practices for sustainable fishing, as well as in defining frameworks and intelligent systems for enforcing sea law and making the sea a safer and more secure place. Imaging is also a key element for the exploration of the underwater world for various scopes, ranging from the predictive maintenance of sub-sea pipelines and other infrastructures to the discovery, documentation and protection of the sunken cultural heritage. The main scope of this Special Issue has been to investigate the techniques and ICT approaches, and in particular the study and application of signal- and image-based methods and, in turn, to explore the advantages of their application to the main areas mentioned above.