Remote sensing in urban planning: Contributions towards ecologically sound policies?

Wellmann, Thilo; Lausch, Angela; Andersson, Erik; Knapp, Sonja; Cortinovis, Chiara; Jache, Jessica; Scheuer, Sebastian; Kremer, Peleg; Mascarenhas, André; Kraemer, Roland; Haase, Annegret; Schug, Franz; Haase, Dagmar

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2020.103921

Cited by 122 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…The monitoring of urban green infrastructure is an important part of sustainable urban development, supported by several policy documents, e.g., [88,89]. However, a recent study by Wellmann et al [90] showed limited integration between ecology, remote sensing and urban planning, and that actionable knowledge and methods for planners and policymakers are rarely developed. This calls for method development of both planning tools and monitoring schemes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Urban Green Infrastructure Changes and Impact on Habitat Connectivity Using High-Resolution Satellite Data

2020

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In recent decades, the City of Stockholm, Sweden, has grown substantially and is now the largest city in Scandinavia. Recent urban growth is placing pressure on green areas within and around the city. In order to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services, green infrastructure is part of Stockholm municipal planning. This research quantifies land-cover change in the City of Stockholm between 2003 and 2018 and examines what impact urban growth has had on its green infrastructure. Two 2018 WorldView-2 images and three 2003 QuickBird-2 images were used to produce classifications of 11 land-cover types using object-based image analysis and a support vector machine algorithm with spectral, geometric and texture features. The classification accuracies reached over 90% and the results were used in calculations and comparisons to determine the impact of urban growth in Stockholm between 2003 and 2018, including the generation of land-cover change statistics in relation to administrative boundaries and green infrastructure. For components of the green infrastructure, i.e., habitat networks for selected sensitive species, habitat network analysis for the European crested tit (Lophophanes cristatus) and common toad (Bufo bufo) was performed. Between 2003 and 2018, urban areas increased by approximately 4% while green areas decreased by 2% in comparison with their 2003 areal amounts. The most significant urban growth occurred through expansion of the transport network, paved surfaces and construction areas which increased by 12%, mainly at the expense of grassland and coniferous forest. Examination of urban growth within the green infrastructure indicated that most land area was lost in dispersal zones (28 ha) while the highest percent change was within habitat for species of conservation concern (14%). The habitat network analysis revealed that overall connectivity decreased slightly through patch fragmentation and areal loss mainly caused by road expansion on the outskirts of the city. The habitat network analysis also revealed which habitat areas are well-connected and which are most vulnerable. These results can assist policymakers and planners in their efforts to ensure sustainable urban development including sustaining biodiversity in the City of Stockholm.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Monitoring Urban Green Infrastructure Changes and Impact on Habitat Connectivity Using High-Resolution Satellite Data

2020

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“…Combining remote sensing images and land use were key in obtaining our results. We contribute to the increasing use of these technologies for ecologically sound policies in regions with scarce published studies [143].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Green Fabric Analysis Promoting Sustainable Planning in Guatemala City

Castillo-Cabrera

Wellmann

Haase

2020

Land

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Urbanization rate in Central America is the second fastest worldwide and its major cities face challenges regarding urban sustainability. Urban Green Fabric (UGF) is an important material condition for the urban quality of life and, therefore, key to planning processes. We performed an analysis of the UGF of Guatemala City including the identification and classification of UGF, their spatial pattern analysis, construction of ensembles of districts (zones) and revealing citizen’s interactions with UGF. We used remote sensing and land use mapping techniques, spatial metrics and a questionnaire survey. Main results are the UGF map of Guatemala City and six ensembles of zones based on a set of indicators. We further revealed citizens’ recognition of green spaces, their perceptions about green space amount and availability as well as their support for UGF future interventions. Finally, we discuss the implications for planning promoted by our results and suggest three actions for UGF sustainability: Creation of new green spaces, protecting existing green spaces and enhancing the mosaic with different green spaces types. UGF is an essential decision support tool for a diversity of actors.

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“…In the last decades, different research projects exploited citizen science efforts and participatory sensing (including crowdsourcing and crowdsensing) to detect and monitor a vast range of attributes of the environment [ 61 ]. Such attributes range from physical characteristics (as urban accessibility [ 62 , 63 ]), to actual measurements (as noise [ 64 , 65 ], air quality [ 19 , 66 , 67 ], and so on), including also environmental-related dimensions (as biodiversity issues [ 68 , 69 ].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sensing and making sense of tourism flows and urban data to foster sustainability awareness: a real-world experience

Prandi

Nisi²,

Ribeiro³

et al. 2021

J Big Data

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Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries fundamentally arising from mobility as a form of capital. In destination islands that have a delicate ecosystem to maintain, this source of income can become problematic in terms of sustainability. A difficulty in making people aware of this issue is also represented by the fact that such sustainability-related issues (and their causes) are often not “visible” to citizens. To foster awareness about the relationship between sustainability and tourism in well-known destinations, we design a platform that engages users at two levels of participation: i. at the IoT and sensors level, in order to let them becoming providers of big data, deploying and enlarging the pervasive infrastructure; ii. at the (big) data visualization level, with the aim of engaging them in making sense of large volumes of data related to sustainability. This paper presents the design and implementation of a real-world experience where a low-cost collaborative platform made it possible to sense and visualize tourist flows and urban data into a rich interactive map-based visualization, open to the local communities. We deployed our case study in the Madeira archipelago, engaging locals and visitors of the island in two exploratory studies focused on measuring the impact of providing users with meaningful representations of tourism flows and related unperceivable aspects that affect the environmental sustainability. Analysing the findings of the two studies, we discuss the potentiality of using such a system to make sense of big data, fostering awareness about sustainability issues, and we point to future open challenges about citizens’ participation in sensing and making sense of big data.

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Remote sensing in urban planning: Contributions towards ecologically sound policies?

Cited by 122 publications

References 80 publications

Monitoring Urban Green Infrastructure Changes and Impact on Habitat Connectivity Using High-Resolution Satellite Data

Monitoring Urban Green Infrastructure Changes and Impact on Habitat Connectivity Using High-Resolution Satellite Data

Urban Green Fabric Analysis Promoting Sustainable Planning in Guatemala City

Sensing and making sense of tourism flows and urban data to foster sustainability awareness: a real-world experience

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