Cityscape, poverty and crime: A quantitative assessment using VHR imagery

Abstract

This work starts by reviewing the potential applications of satellite remote sensing to regional science research in urban settings. Regional science is the study of social problems that have a spatial dimension (Isard, 1975; Isserman, 2004). The availability of satellite remote sensing data has increased significantly in the last two decades, and these data constitute a useful data source for mapping the composition of urban settings and analyzing changes over time (Weng & Quattrochi, 2006). The increasing spatial resolution of commercial satellite imagery has influenced the emergence of new research and applications of regional science in urban settlements because it is now possible to identify individual objects of the urban fabric (Sliuzas et al., 2010).