Urban Monitoring Theme

Photo by Lee Gillen

Guest Editor for Urban Monitoring
Paolo Gamba paolo.gamba@unipv.it
Associate Professor
Department of Electronics
University of Pavia
27100 Pavia, Italy

Editor‐in‐Chief
Paul E. Racette editor@earthzine.org

Deputy Editor‐in‐Chief
Christoph Aubrecht christoph.aubrecht@earthzine.org

Articles published for Earthzine’s Urban Monitoring theme (June 21-Sept. 22, 2011) explore a variety of issues related to urbanization.

About half of Earth’s population lives in urban areas, which occupy less than 3% of the planet’s land area. By 2025, 5 billion of the Earth’s projected 8 billion people are expected to live in urban areas.

Topics of focus for this theme include how Earth Observation technologies have contributed to our understanding of the impacts of rapid urbanization, the impacts of urbanization on climate change (and vice versa), and the current capacity and projected need for urban monitoring technologies.

Theme Articles

Addressing Environmental Sustainability Locally

Local public environmental services in England are tackling environmental sustainability through the intelligent use of geographic information by cutting emissions, waste and fuel use. This also leads to cost reductions in delivering services.

Gesche Schmid, posted on November 17th, 2011
Articles, Energy, Urban Monitoring

The GeoSat Project: Using Remote Sensing to Keep Pace with Urban Dynamics

The routine updating of municipal maps at 10-year intervals cannot keep pace with modern urban dynamics. The GeoSat project steps into this breach to demonstrate how city planners and managers can use remote sensing to develop new information, incorporate it into existing maps and apply the results across a range of municipal tasks.

Santos, et al. , posted on November 9th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Nigeria’s New Satellite to Monitor Disasters, Urban Development

The first images returned from NigeriaSat-2, Nigeria's first high-resolution Earth observation satellite, demonstrate enhancements put into place by the Nigerian space agency. A selection of images from NigeriaSat-2 were presented at the 62nd International Astronautical Congress in Cape Town, South Africa.

Jeff Kart, posted on October 20th, 2011
Disasters, Quick Look, Urban Monitoring

Understanding the Drivers and Consequences of Global Urbanization using Emerging Remote Sensing Technologies

Is urban remote sensing really useful to local planners? Does the research community understand which applications, scales and data are most relevant and sought after? These and other questions were addressed in a recent workshop organized by the Geography Department at the Arizona State University.

Dell'Acqua et al. , posted on September 30th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Satellite Monitoring of Urbanization in China for Sustainable Development: The Dragon ‘Urbanization’ Project

The rate of Chinese urbanization is one of the fastest on Earth. A project funded by the European Space Agency and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China under the Dragon II framework is developing tools to use European and Chinese Earth observation data for urban environmental monitoring in Jing-Jin-Ji, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta.

Ban et al. , posted on September 27th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Satellite Observation of Urban Metabolism

Urban Metabolism is a conceptual framework for analyzing the flow of energy and materials within cities. This paper discusses evidence that satellite-observed nighttime lights can be used to map and monitor urban metabolism and review the observational requirements for designing an optimized satellite instrument.

Elvidge et al. , posted on September 26th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Sorting Out India’s Soot Situation: A Conversation with Jayaraman Srinivasan

Earthzine speaks with Jayaraman Srinivasan, the climate modeler tapped to lead India's Black Carbon Research Initiative, on the scientific and political context for research on soot and its role in glacial melting and climate change.

Peter Fairley, posted on September 6th, 2011
Featured Person, Urban Monitoring

Can Cities Create Their Own Snowfall? What Observations are required to find out?

If you do not think human activities can create or alter snowfall patterns, then consider the events of Jan. 19, 2011 in Dodge City, Kansas. The National Weather Service documented an unusual weather pattern that caused a very narrow band of snow downwind of Dodge City. The NWS website states that “the atmosphere was cold and moist with low clouds and fog preceding the formation of the snow.

J. Marshall Shepherd and Thomas L. Mote , posted on September 6th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring, Weather

DISCOVER-AQ Mission Improves Air Quality Monitoring

NASA launches a month-long DISCOVER-AQ mission to gather air samples from various altitudes in an effort to combat pollution in Maryland.

Wanda Archy, posted on August 19th, 2011
Articles, Climate, Urban Monitoring

Population Estimates in Informal Settlements Using Object-Based Image Analysis and 3D Modeling

The proliferation of multistory residential buildings with high occupation densities in the cities of developing countries poses serious challenges to our ability to estimate populations, particularly in squatter settlements where conducting surveys may pose a safety risk to field workers. An innovative method applying both 2D and 3D information derived from digital elevation models obtained by orbital very high resolution images demonstrates that remotely sensed data can provide fast and fairly accurate results that can be updated continuously in the inter-census periods.

Almeida et al. , posted on August 16th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Remote Sensing – An Effective Data Source for Urban Monitoring

Remotely sensed data are inherently suited to provide information on urban land cover characteristics, and their changes over time, at various spatial and temporal scales. This paper gives an overview and examples of current applications at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to demonstrate capabilities and limitations for monitoring in cities based on remotely sensed data.

H. Taubenböck and T. Esch, posted on July 20th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

2011 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (2011 JURSE)

Paolo Gamba, guest editor for our current Urban Monitoring theme, reports on the 2011 Joint Urban Remote Sensing event held in Munich, Germany.

Paolo Gamba, posted on July 12th, 2011
Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Temporal Characteristics of Thermal Satellite Sensors for Urban Heat Island Analysis

How accurate are thermal satellite images compared to on-the-ground field measurements when it comes to assessing the urban heat island (UHI) effect in Hong Kong? This research suggests that thermal images can be useful on hot summer nights to evaluate the magnitude and distribution of Hong Kong’s UHI.

Janet Nichol and Pui Hang To, posted on July 8th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Very High Spatial Resolution Imagery for Urban Applications

A commercial satellite called WorldView-2 is the latest from DigitalGlobe. It includes new spectral bands to support vegetation and coastal analysis. This provides the potential for more robust modeling and discrimination of spectral signatures, resulting in more accurate feature extraction and land cover classification.

Fabio Pacifici, posted on June 27th, 2011
Articles, Earth Observation, Urban Monitoring

Call for Papers – Urban Monitoring

Earthzine.org is soliciting articles of 800-3,000 words for its 3rd Quarter Theme Issue on Urban Monitoring. About half of the planet’s 6.6 billion people now live in urban areas, which occupy less than 3% of the land area. By the year 2025, the global population is expected to reach 8 billion, of which 5 billion are expected to reside in urban areas. Now is an opportune time to examine trends and developments in urban monitoring.

Jeff Kart, posted on April 16th, 2011
Earth Observation, Ecosystems, Urban Monitoring