Eye movement recordings and their analysis constitute an effective way to examine visual perception. There is a special need for the design of computer software for the performance of data analysis. The present study describes the development of a new toolbox, called EyeMMV (Eye Movements Metrics & Visualizations), for post experimental eye movement analysis. The detection of fixation events is performed with the use of an introduced algorithm based on a two-step spatial dispersion threshold. Furthermore, EyeMMV is designed to support all well-known eye tracking metrics and visualization techniques. The results of fixation identification algorithm are compared with those of an algorithm of dispersion-type with a moving window, imported in another open source analysis tool. The comparison produces outputs that are strongly correlated. The EyeMMV software is developed using the scripting language of MATLAB and the source code is distributed through GitHub under the third version of GNU General Public License (link: https://github.com/krasvas/EyeMMV).

The present article describes an experimental study towards the examination of human visual behavior during the observation of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) videos. Experimental performance is based on the collection and the quantitative & qualitative analysis of eye tracking data. The results highlight that UAV flight altitude serves as a dominant specification that affects the visual attention process, while the presence of sky in the video background seems to be the less affecting factor in this procedure. Additionally, the main surrounding environment, the main size of the observed object as well as the main perceived angle between UAV’s flight plain and ground appear to have an equivalent influence in observers’ visual reaction during the exploration of such stimuli. Moreover, the provided heatmap visualizations indicate the most salient locations in the used UAVs videos. All produced data (raw gaze data, fixation and saccade events, and heatmap visualizations) are freely distributed to the scientific community as a new dataset (EyeTrackUAV) that can be served as an objective ground truth in future studies.

The present study introduces a new MATLAB toolbox, called MatMouse, suitable for the performance of experimental studies based on mouse movements tracking and analysis. MatMouse supports the implementation of task-based visual search experiments. The proposed toolbox provides specific functions which can be utilized for the experimental building and mouse tracking processes, the analysis of the recorded data in specific metrics, the production of related visualizations, as well as for the generation of statistical grayscale heatmaps which could serve as an objective ground truth product. MatMouse can be executed as a standalone package or integrated in existing MATLAB scripts and/or toolboxes. In order to highlight the functionalities of the introduced toolbox, a complete case study example is presented. MatMouse is freely distributed to the scientific community under the third version of GNU General Public License (GPL v3) on GitHub platform.

Human activities and climate change constitute the contemporary catalyst for natural processes and their impacts, i.e., geo-environmental hazards. Globally, natural catastrophic phenomena and hazards, such as drought, soil erosion, quantitative and qualitative degradation of groundwater, frost, flooding, sea level rise, etc., are intensified by anthropogenic factors. Thus, they present rapid increase in intensity, frequency of occurrence, spatial density, and significant spread of the areas of occurrence. The impact of these phenomena is devastating to human life and to global economies, private holdings, infrastructure, etc., while in a wider context it has a very negative effect on the social, environmental, and economic status of the affected region. Geospatial technologies including Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing—Earth Observation as well as related spatial data analysis tools, models, databases, contribute nowadays significantly in predicting, preventing, researching, addressing, rehabilitating, and managing these phenomena and their effects. This review attempts to mark the most devastating geo-hazards from the view of environmental monitoring, covering the state of the art in the use of geospatial technologies in that respect. It also defines the main challenge of this new era which is nothing more than the fictitious exploitation of the information produced by the environmental monitoring so that the necessary policies are taken in the direction of a sustainable future. The review highlights the potential and increasing added value of geographic information as a means to support environmental monitoring in the face of climate change. The growth in geographic information seems to be rapidly accelerated due to the technological and scientific developments that will continue with exponential progress in the years to come. Nonetheless, as it is also highlighted in this review continuous monitoring of the environment is subject to an interdisciplinary approach and contains an amount of actions that cover both the development of natural phenomena and their catastrophic effects mostly due to climate change.