Remote Sensing and GIS for Modelling Green Roofs Potential at Different Urban Scales

Abstract

Urban greening is an essential dimension of sustainable urban development. Through green planning, cities can develop strategies towards climate change and mitigation actions and reduce emissions. This chapter aims to evaluate the combined use of remote sensing data and GIS to produce different levels of sustainable indicators, starting from the city level to the neighborhood and the building levels. Green roofs can be part of the solution through the ecosystem services provided. Its benefits are evaluated for the different urban scales through scenario analysis. The impact in the outdoor thermal comfort is assessed at the neighborhood level, while the overall potential to improve energy efficiency is evaluated at the building level. The methodology is implemented in the city of Lisbon, Portugal through a pilot case study. The results can provide rationales for the city when formulating new incentives to encourage the uptake of green roofs in Lisbon.

Assessing Urban Greenness Fragmentation and Analysis of Its Associated Factors: A Case Study in Wuhan Metropolitan Area, China

“…Last but not least, the current study on modeling the urban greenness considers the two-dimensional scope only. There are several studies that have focused on 3D perspective by taking point cloud data and 3D GIS modeling to explore vertical structure in urban vegetation distribution [11,42,43]. Those studies rely on more complicated data collection such as LiDAR sensors and provide a different view on the urban vegetation pattern, which deserves future attention by integrating the 3D data and the proposed Frag modeling.…”

“…Urban vegetation cover can benefit the living environment by mitigating the rise of land surface temperature and the loss of vegetation cover is likely to strengthen urban heat island effect [9,10]. Because of the great environmental pressure from rapid urbanization, green roofs strategies by planting vegetation on rooftop in urbanized areas were introduced [10,11]. Urban sprawl may split vegetated areas into smaller and isolated patches, commonly referred to as fragmentation or decreased aggregation in vegetation cover which is considered as a threat to ecosystem functions, local biodiversity, and other ecological services [12,13].…”

“…Applications of remote sensing technology have facilitated mapping urban vegetation over large areas [10]. Urban vegetation can be mapped not only from two-dimensional perspective using spectral sensors [10] but also from three-dimensional (3D) view via LiDAR sensors [10,41] or 3D GIS modeling [11,42,43]. To the best of our knowledge, no single indicator can simultaneously measure the abundance and fragmentation of urban vegetation cover.…”