Urban Remote Sensing – How Can Earth Observation Support the Sustainable Development of Urban Environments?

Abstract

Cities are centres of economy, policy, society and culture and more than half of the world’s population already lives in metropolitan areas. Urbanization is one of the most dynamic processes in the context of global land use transformations. The sprawl of settlements and the emergence of megacities are rapidly accelerating – particularly in Asia and Africa. Cities require enormous quantities of resources and at the same time they generate large amounts of waste and pollutants. Hence, urban management increasingly demands alternative concepts and techniques to implement and assure effective and sustainable urban development. A key issue in this context is up-to-date information on the status and development of the urban system. Spaceborne earth observation (EO) has become a promising tool to provide the required geodata. Over the past years the German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD) of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has increasingly researched into the support of urban and spatial planning by means of remote sensing techniques and EO-based geoinformation products. In this paper we first give a general overview on the concepts and products of a satellite-supported analysis of urban areas. Next, we introduce selected applications and value-added information products including the application of EO data for monitoring urban sprawl, mapping of impervious surface, modelling the urban-micro climate, assessing the potential for local heating, deriving socio-economic characteristics and describing the vulnerability towards natural desasters.