Sustainable Urban Planning using Earth Observation
GEOURBAN is an ERA.Net Project (ERA.Net-RUS-033) co-founded by the European Commission under INTAS, focusing on “ExploitinG Earth Observation in
sUstainable uRBan plAnning & management”.
The increasing availability of Earth Observation (EO) technologies has provided new opportunities for a wide range of urban applications, such as mapping and monitoring of the urban environment, socio-economic estimations, characterization of urban climate, analysis of regional and global impacts and urban security and emergency preparedness. However, a gap exists between the research-focused results offered by the urban EO community and the application of these data and products by urban planners and decision makers. The main objective of the GEOURBAN is to bridge the gap between EO scientists and urban planners by demonstrating the ability of current and future EO systems to depict parameters of urban structure and urban environmental quality over large areas at detailed level. GEOURBAN will also develop a web-based information system which will have the potential to support urban planning and management by providing a set of EO-based indicators easily transferable to any city and understood and by non-experts.
The project started on January 1st, 2012 and will last 2 years. It is carried out by a Consortium of 6 partners from 6 countries, carefully selected to meet the needs of the project in terms of skills, competencies and understanding of the problem and possible solutions, each of them bringing specific knowledge of at least one aspect of the supply chain. The GEOURBAN Web based Information System (WIS) could be evaluated by clicking WIS LINK.
Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH) is the GEOURBAN Coordinator.