Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1 Introduction
over Urban Areas (since 2001) jointly sponsored by Geoscience
and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) and ISPRS. Since 2005 the
two forums have colocated to form a joint event that was officially
named the ''Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE)'' in 2007.
In the United States, the author began to organize special
paper sessions on remote sensing and geographic information
systems (GIS) for urban analysis at the annual meetings of the
Association of American Geographers (AAG) since 2000. In
addressing the multidisciplinary needs, several major areas have
been identified as the session themes, which include remote
sensor data requirements for urban areas, development of dig-
ital image processing techniques for urban feature extraction,
deriving urban socioeconomic indicators by remote sensing and
spatial analysis, assessment of environmental consequences of
urbanization by remote sensing, urban and landscape modeling
using remote sensor data, urban change case studies, interface
between remote sensing and urban geography, and urban remote
sensing education.
Sponsored by AAG's Remote Sensing, GIS and Urban Geog-
raphy Specialty Groups, these urban remote sensing conference
sessions have been well received. More than 100 papers have been
presented during the past 10 years, which featured the research
conducted by some well-established urban remote sensing schol-
ars, quite a few rising stars in urban remote sensing and GIS, as
well as a large number of doctoral students predominately from
American universities. The Remote Sensing and GIS for Urban
Analysis Special Paper Session has therefore become a major
urban remote sensing forum in the United States.
The above forums have led to the publication of at least eight
theme issues on urban remote sensing by virtually all major
remote sensing journals during the last decade, along with at
least ten topics with urban remote sensing as the subject (Yang,
2009). While urban remote sensing is rapidly emerging as a
major field of study receiving more attention than ever, there
was no any topic with a broad vision on urban remote sensing
research that resembles the themes formulated by the author for
the urban analysis special paper sessions. Most of the published
topics were restricted to extracting urban feature and interpreting
land use using various remote sensing systems and digital image
processing techniques. They offer little insights on the synergistic
use of remote sensing and spatial data analysis techniques for
deriving socioeconomic and environmental indicators in the
urban environment and for modeling the spatial consequences
of past, current and future urban development.
Within the above context, a broad vision topic on urban
remote sensing research is timely. Designed for both the aca-
demic and business sectors, this topic examines how the modern
concepts, technologies and methods in remote sensing can be
creatively used to solve problems relevant to a wide range of
topics extending beyond urban feature extraction into two core
inquiring areas in urban studies, i.e., urban socioeconomic and
environmental analyses and predictive modeling of urbaniza-
tion. Specifically, the topic covers the following major aspects
(Fig. 1.1):
Remote sensing is the art, science and technology of acquiring
information about physical objects and the environment through
recording, measuring and interpreting imagery and digital rep-
resentations of energy patterns derived from noncontact sensors
(Colwell, 1997). Remote sensing has traditionally been the colony
of earth scientists and national security communities and urban
questions have been largely marginalized (Sherbinin et al ., 2002).
With recent innovations in data, technologies, and theories
in the wider arena of Earth Observation, urban remote sensing,
or urban applications of remote sensing, has rapidly gained the
popularity among a wide variety of communities. First, urban and
regional planners are increasingly using remote sensing to derive
information on the urban environment in a timely, detailed
and cost-effective way to accommodate various planning and
management activities (e.g., Sugumaran, Zerr and Prato, 2002;
Alberti, Weeks and Coe, 2004; Mittelbach and Schneider, 2005;
Santana, 2007; Bhatta, 2010). Second, more urban researchers
are using remote sensing to extract urban structure information
for studying urban geometry, which can help develop theories
and models of urban morphology (e.g., Batty and Longley, 1994;
Longley, 2002; Herold, Scepan and Clarke, 2002; Yang, 2002;
Lo, 2004, 2007; Rashed et al ., 2005; Batty, 2008; Schneider and
Woodcock, 2008). Third, environmental scientists are increas-
ingly relying upon remote sensing to derive urban land cover
information as a primary boundary condition used in many spa-
tially distributed models (e.g., Lo, Quattrochi and Luvall, 1997;
Lo and Quattrochi, 2003; Arthur-Hartranft, Carlson and Clarke,
2003; Carlson, 2004; Stefanov and Netzband, 2005; Hepinstall,
Alberti and Marzluff, 2008). Lastly, the global change commu-
nity has recognized remote sensing as an enabling and acceptable
technology to study the spatiotemporal dynamics and conse-
quences of urbanization as a major form of global changes (e.g.,
Bartlett, Mageean and O'Connor, 2000; Small and Nicholls, 2003;
Auch, Taylor and Acededo, 2004; Small, 2005; Turner, Lambin
and Reenberg, 2007; Grimm et al ., 2008), given the facts that
more than half of the global population are now residing in cities
(UN-HABITAT, 2010) and urban areas are the home of major
global production and manufacture centers (Kaplan, Wheeler
and Holloway, 2009).
The development in urban remote sensing has prompted
much interest from academics, and dedicated scholarly forums on
urban remote sensing began to appear in 1995 when the European
Science Foundation (ESF) sponsored a specialist meeting on
remote sensing and urban analysis as part of its GISDATA
Programme. This meeting featured the research conducted by
16 invited scholars mostly from Europe, with the exception
of Michael Batty and C.P. Lo. Batty, a British scholar and
an urban modeling pioneer, was with the State University of
New York at Buffalo (USA) during 1990 - 1995; Lo, a British-
trained scholar and a pioneer in urban remote sensing, was
with the University of Georgia (USA) from 1984 to 2007. The
papers presented at the ESF-sponsored event largely centered on
interpreting urban physical structure and land use (see Donnay,
Barnsley and Longley, 2001). This European-style urban remote
sensing research framework has dominated the two subsequent
major urban remote sensing forums: International Symposia on
Remote Sensing of Urban Areas (since 1979) sponsored by the
International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
(ISPRS) and Workshops on Remote Sensing and Data Fusion
Introduces a broad vision of urban remote sensing research
that draws upon a number of disciplines to support monitor-
ing, synthesis and modeling in the urban environment;
Reviews the advances in remote sensors and image processing
techniques for urban attribute information extraction;
Examines some latest developments in the synergistic use of
remote sensing and other types of geospatial information for
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