Applying Geospatial Technologies in Urban Environments

Abstract

About this bookAs the epigraph suggest, cities are to become one of the chief policy concerns of the 21 st century. Moreover, cities are unique policy realms in that urbanization is an issue and process that resides at the nexus of human and physical systems and unites the research and policy interests of natural and social scientists alike. This is true as urbanization as a process unites often-disparate social and physical systems to create entirely new policy challenges such as environmental degradation, the development and maintenance of physical and social infrastructures, the challenge of expanding economic opportunities, designing effective service delivery regimes that promote the overall sustainability of urban areas, and assessing the policy outcomes. Consequently, researchers and policy makers are concerned with identifying and overcoming the full range of challenges associated with urban systems. Unfortunately, the ability of researchers and planners to assess and investigate complex urban systems has been somewhat frustrated by a lack effective and accessible research and decision making tools. Over the past fifteen years, remote sensing and geographic information systems (GIS) have been shown to provide an excellent way to investigate urban areas. However, the availability, "usability", and range of potential applications of these technologies had until recently been limited to a community of specialists and scientistist. Today remote

Use of AMSR-E microwave satellite data for land surface characteristics and snow cover variation

“…Actually access of large-scale regional land surface information is critical to emergency management during natural disasters [4], [5].This data information helps us to understand how satellite remote sensing can be useful for the long-term observation of the intra and inter-annual variability of snow packs in rather inaccessible regions and providing useful information on a critical component of the hydrological cycle, where the network of meteorological stations is deficient [6], [7].This data information is useful for monitoring the seasonal snow cover variation for several purposes such as climatology, hydrometeorology, water use and control and hydrology, including flood forecasting and food production [8], [9].…”

“…This data information helps us to understand how satellite remote sensing can be useful for the long-term observation of the intra and inter-annual variability of snow packs in rather inaccessible regions and providing useful information on a critical component of the hydrological cycle, where the network of meteorological stations is deficient [6], [7].…”

Classification and Assessment of the Land Use – Land Cover Changes in Jodhpur City Using Remote Sensing Technologies

“…Secondary data incorporated are the ground truth (GT) data for the LULC feature classes ( Table-4). The GT data were in the form of location points collected using GPS for the image analysis and used for classification analysis and assessment of classification accuracy (Jensen et al 2005).…”

An Integrated Model Based on a Hierarchical Indices System for Monitoring and Evaluating Urban Sustainability

“…Urbanization can be simultaneously considered both an issue and a process that links different physical and social systems to a high concern of sustainability with regards to environmental problems, public infrastructures, service development, and policy making [39]. Global economic growth has driven this issue to experience an unprecedented period.…”

“…A lot of research has shown that both traditional statistical approaches and advanced geospatial technologies (RS and GIS) have great potential for investigating urban problems [39]. In Particular, the incorporation of both methodologies can significantly enhance the ability of researchers in characterizing urban morphology [52,[73][74][75], monitoring the urban dynamic process [43,45,51,76], investigating urban environmental problems [51,[77][78][79], and assessing urban QOL [59,[80][81][82].…”