Foreword to the special issue on ground penetrating radar: Modeling tools, imaging methods and systems

This special issue spreads from the XIII International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR2010) held in June 2010 in Lecce, Italy. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is one of the mostly assessed and exploited technologies for non-destructive subsurface sensing and imaging. As a matter of fact, its flexibility (as far as systems, measurement protocols and processing strate- gies are concerned) makes it a powerful tool to handle many dif- ferent observation and sensing applications, ranging from struc- tural monitoring to demining, security and geophysical surveys. Due to the challenging needs arisen by such a widespread appli- cation, GPR is an extremely active field for scientific research as indeed efforts aimed at developing new modeling tools, imaging methods and systems concepts can either improve the outcome of GPR surveys or open the way to new, not yet explored, applica- tions. In this respect, this special issue presents a selection of papers that provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the state of the art of research activities carried out on the most relevant and promising trends of development of GPR technology.