Assessment of Historical Aerial Photography as Initial Screening Tool to Identify Areas at Possible Risk to Sinkhole Development

Use of historical aerial photography to perform desktop site assessments to mitigate cover-collapse sinkhole risk is not a new concept in the geoscientific arena. Unfortunately, it has not been a routine part of the decision matrix for land-use planning and development. This paper demonstrates the importance of historical aerial photography analysis as a preliminary tool to identify site-specific sinkhole risk. Three case studies are presented to underscore this observation. In sinkhole-prone regions in parts of Florida and many other states across the county, infrastructure siting and other land-use planning activities would be well-served to include this type of analysis