Remote Sensing of Urban Areas

Lecturer

Hannes Taubenböck
Henri Dubray

ECTS

5 ECTS

 

Aim

Aim of this course is to provide you with an overview on geographic processes of urbanization, the related demographic and structural changes of cities, and data analyses methods using remote sensing data for applications in urban geography.

Content

Humankind is within its largest migration ever: from rural areas into cities. The drivers of this global process of urbanization from demographic to economic and the related  structural changes cities are facing will be discussed in this course. Remote sensing is one crucial data source in this dynamic transformation and its products are highly relevant for urban planning, as well as environmental management. Within this course different approaches and techniques are covered focusing on deriving relevant information about urbanized areas on different levels of detail. Uni-temporal-, multi-temporal-, and time series based image classification, segmentation, the analyses of point patterns, GIS analyses to assess spatial context and dependencies, as well as analyses in the 3D domain will be addressed in this course. This will be done providing and discussing example applications from different regions globally (e.g. urban sprawl analysis of megacities, the development of new dimensions of urban landscapes such as mega-regions, the rearrangement of business districts within the urban landscape, etc.). You will learn what capabilities Earth observation data, methods and products have for urban research and applications and how to design remote sensing based urban analysis, how to avoid caveats, troubleshoot errors and interpret the results.

General Course News and Updates

EAGLE application in 2022

EAGLE application in 2022

We received again more than 200 applicants from all over the world. In total applicants from 42 different countries applied to our international Earth Observation M.Sc. program, covering countries such as Hungary, Morocco, Malaysia, Kenya, Nepal or Columbia. We are...

read more
EAGLE application deadline 2022

EAGLE application deadline 2022

Our application deadline for 2022 is approaching. If you want to study applied Earth Observation and learn about a variety of remote sensing sensors and methods as well as about fields of applications, submit your application at the latest on May 15th. Accepted...

read more
MSc defense by Haiyin Ye

MSc defense by Haiyin Ye

On Friday 20th of May at 9am Haiyin will present her M.Sc. thesis "Monitoring Gypsy Moth Outbreak Using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 Data". From the abstract: "Gypsy moth Lymantria dispar (L.) is a serious pest in deciduous forests, the larvae of which can feed on a...

read more
MSc defense by Sofia Garcia

MSc defense by Sofia Garcia

On Friday, March 11th at 9am Sofia will present her M.Sc. thesis "Estimating socioeconomic variables in Bolivia using satellite-based nighttime light images and electricity consumption data". From the abstract: "The lack of up-to-date data on socio-economic parameters...

read more
MSc thesis defense by Nestor Gualsaqui

MSc thesis defense by Nestor Gualsaqui

On March 8th at 10:30 Nestor will present his M.Sc. thesis "Pre-crop emergence weed mapping using high satellite imagery". From the abstract: "During the last decades, the growth of the world population has been increasing and weather fluctuations around the world...

read more
MSc defense Nils Karges

MSc defense Nils Karges

Nils Karges will present his M.Sc. thesis "Exploring spatial relationships of soundscape variables in urban areas. " on 15th of February at 9:30. From the abstract: "This work describes the relationship between soundscape and the underlying landscape in an urban...

read more
MSc defense Camilo Zamora

MSc defense Camilo Zamora

On Friday 11th of February at 9am Camilo Zamora will present his M.Sc. thesis "Deforestation dynamics in the Dry Chaco ecoregion: a three decades of change detection and fragmentation study analysis". From the abtract: "Tropical forests represent 52% of global forests...

read more