Digital world meets urban planet – new prospects for evidence-based urban studies arising from joint exploitation of big earth data, information technology and shared knowledge

Abstract

The digital transformation taking place in all areas of life has led to a massive increase in digital datain particular, related to the places where and the ways how we live. To facilitate an exploration of the new opportunities arising from this development the Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform (U-TEP) has been set-up. This enabling instrument represents a virtual environment that combines open access to multisource data repositories with dedicated data processing, analysis and visualisation functionalities. Moreover, it includes mechanisms for the development and sharing of technology and knowledge. After an introduction of the underlying methodical concept, this paper introduces four selected use cases that were carried out on the basis of U-TEP: two technology-driven applications implemented by users from the remote sensing and software engineering community (generation of cloud-free mosaics, processing of drone data) and two examples related to concrete use scenarios defined by planners and decision makers (data analytics related to global urbanization, monitoring of regional land-use dynamics). The experiences from U-TEP's pre-operations phase show that the system can effectively support the derivation of new data, facts and empirical evidence that helps scientists and decision-makers to implement improved strategies for sustainable urban development.

Outlining where humans live, the World Settlement Footprint 2015

“…Candidate non-settlement pixels 39 project. Classification has been also carried out in the same infrastructure, whereas post-classification activities have been performed in the Calvalus system 40 available at DLR's Earth Observation Center.…”

Towards a Large-Scale 3D Modeling of the Built Environment—Joint Analysis of TanDEM-X, Sentinel-2 and Open Street Map Data

“…Once more, GUF-3D datasets have been processed and validated, and an open and free provision is foreseen, for instance via German Aerospace Center's (DLR) Earth Observation Center (EOC) Geoservice (https://geoservice.dlr.de) and the Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform [42] (https: //urban-tep.eu).…”

Digital Transformation In Manufacturing, Infastructure And Public Services

“…Prioritized sectors and industries in terms of digitization today are machine building, energy, including energy efficiency, circular economy (Molchanova, 2020), construction, textiles, small and medium-size businesses, retailing (Meyer et al, 2018), agriculture (Esch et al, 2020;Richter et al, 2019), transport and logistics (Dubovik et al, 2018), health services, education, while information and communication technologies and finance, possessing negligent digital riskiness levels, are characterized by much higher rates of digital transformation as compared to the former. This condition determines the necessity for the state to establish legal measures and incentives for the above sectors and industries and to effect investments of state funds into the prioritized areas.…”

“…It is here that government has to put effort to increase investments in digitization making it top-priority. Study of successful examples in innovationbased digital transformation (Esch et al, 2020;Habanik et al, 2019;Kolla et al, 2019;Piskun et al, 2019;Tolstykh et al, 2018) reveals prerequisites for effective projecting in digital transformation and these are to be accounted for when developing strategy for digital government and implementing programs and projects of digital transformation. Private investors are to be given incentives Integration of digital technologies in manufacturing, infrastructure and public services allows integrating digital technologies-based applications to search for solutions in the areas of digital transformation, security, data protection while gaining benefits from digital transformation at all levels and in all aspects of society.…”