The Global Urban Footprint

A new worldwide human settlements layer

to assess anthropogenic disturbances

T. Esch, M. Marconcini, A. Felbier, W. Heldens, A. Roth, M. Wegmann

German Aerospace Center (DLR)

Earth Observation Center (EOC)

German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD)

Land Surface (LAX)

Motivation

Chart 2 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

o 180.000 additional urban inhabitants per day.

o Currently 26 mega cities, but more than 100 within the next 30 years.

o China: 30 new cities with >1 million inhabitants in next two decades.

o India: 26 new cities with >1 million inhabitants in next two decades.

Motivation

Chart 3 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Chart 4 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

1972

Manila, Philippines

Chart 5 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

1988

Manila, Philippines

Chart 6 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

2010

Manila, Philippines

Potere, D., Schneider, A., Angel, S. & Civco, D.L. (2009). Mapping urban areas on a global scale:

which of the eight maps now available is more accurate?. International Journal of Remote Sensing,

vol. 30, issue 24, pp. 6531-6558.

Dar

es S

ala

am

A

ccra

B

agh

da

d

Am

ste

rda

m

Motivation GlobCover 2000

Chart 7 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Chart 8 JURSE 2013, 21-23 April 2013, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Chart 8 EORSA, 2012, June 8-11, Shanghai, China

Global Urban Footprint 2011 / 2012 / 2013

Esch, T., Taubenböck, H., Roth, A., Heldens, W., Felbier, A., Thiel, M., Schmidt, M., Müller, A., Dech, S. (2012): TanDEM-X mission - New perspectives for the inventory

and monitoring of global settlement patterns. Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, vol. 6, issue 1, 061702 (October 04, 2012); 21 pp., doi: 10.1117/1.JRS.6.061702.

TanDEM-X Mission

- TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement.

- Two SAR satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X operating

in twin-constellation.

- Collection of two global data sets of VHR SAR images with a geometric

resolution of 3 m (stripmap mode) in 2011/2012 and 2012/2013.

- Primary mission goal is provision of global DEM with 12 m ground resolution

Global Urban Footprint

- Global Urban Footprint (GUF) layer

- World-wide inventory of human settlements using data of TanDEM-X mission.

- Analysis of first global VHR SAR data coverage collected in 2011/2012.

- Generation of settlement mask with spatial resolution of 0.4 arcsec (~12 m) for

scientific and commercial use; version with 2.8 arcsec (~60 m) grid spacing as

public domain data set under discussion.

- Release of Global Urban Footprint product planned for end of 2014.

- Baseline product for analysis of urban and rural settlement patterns and their

spatiotemporal development (i.a., GEO SB-04).

Chart 10 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

- Novel technical framework orchestrating entire suite of processing and

analysis modules.

- Fully-automatic processing chain (C++) for effective processing of >180,000

complex SAR images composing one global coverage (~300 TB of input data).

- UFP can process ~1000-4000 images (SSC) per day (~2-8 TB).

- Methodology: Urban Footprint Processor (UFP)

Esch, T., Marconcini, M., Felbier, A., Roth, A., Heldens, W., Huber, M., Schwinger, M., Taubenböck, H., Müller, A. & S. Dech (2013): Urban

Footprint Processor – Fully Automated Processing Chain Generating Settlement Masks from Global Data of the TanDEM-X Mission. IEEE

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2013. Pp. 1617-1621. ISSN 1545-598X, DOI 10.1109/LGRS.2013.2272953.

Global Urban Footprint

TerraSAR-X intensity Derived texture image Generated urban footprint (12 m)

- Methodology: Urban Footprint Processor (UFP)

Chart 11 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Global Urban Footprint

Optical data view Derived texture image Global Urban Footprint (12 m)

- Methodology: Urban Footprint Processor (UFP)

Chart 12 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Global Urban Footprint

- Product: Global Urban Footprint layer (GUF)

TanDEM-X amplitude mosaic, Germany

(551 scenes)

Derived texture layer Global Urban Footprint

Chart 13 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Subset of Bavaria GUF mosaic, Germany (70 scenes)

Reference building mask

Overall accuracy: 94.7%

Kappa: 0.74

Global Urban Footprint

Chart 14 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

- Product: Global Urban Footprint layer (GUF)

Mosaic of Japan (609 scenes) Derived texture Global Urban Footprint

Tokio

Nagoya

Toyama

Global Urban Footprint

Chart 15 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

- Product: Global Urban Footprint layer (GUF)

Global Urban Footprint

Global Urban Footprint mask for identical region MODIS 500 product for Delhi area, India

Chart 16 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

- Product: Global Urban Footprint layer (GUF)

Global Urban Footprint

Chart 17 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

- Product: Global Urban Footprint layer (GUF)

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Description of urbanization patterns

Global Urban Footprint, Germany Derived spatial network (5km distance) Settlement centrality analysis

Chart 18 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

T. Esch, M. Marconcini, D. Marmanis, J. Zeidler, S. Elsayed, A. Metz, A. Müller, S. Dech (2014): Dimensioning Urbanization – An Advanced Procedure

for Characterizing Human Settlement Properties and Patterns Using Spatial Network analysis. Submitted to Journal of Applied Geography.

Spatial network (5 km search radius)

Chart 19 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Spatial network (5km distance)

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Description of urbanization patterns

Chart 20 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Description of urbanization patterns

Chart 21 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

Quantitative characterization of urban sprawl in the Madrid region (Spain) by means of spatial network analysis

- Analysis of settlement evolution

Chart 22 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

Spatiotemporal mapping of mega cities development

Taubenböck, H., Esch, T., Felbier, A., Wiesner, M., Roth, A. & S. Dech (2012). Monitoring of mega cities from space. Remote Sensing of Environment, vol. 117, pp. 162-176.

- Analysis of settlement evolution

Chart 23 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Analysis of settlement evolution

Spatiotemporal mapping of urban growth

Chart 24 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

Directional multiple ring buffer analysis of urban coverage in the vicinity of Chintamoni Kar Wildlife Sanctuary, India

Besser, Tim (2011) Sprawling crisis? - Urbanization from the perspective of protected areas near Kolkata, India. Master Thesis, University of Bayreuth.

- Detecting urban pressure on protected areas

Chart 25 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Analysis of animal movement ecology

J. F

ah

r, M

ax P

lan

ck In

stitu

te fo

r O

rnith

olo

gy, R

ad

olfze

ll, G

erm

an

y

Study on the correlation between fruit bat movement (Eidolon helvum)

and settlement pattern in the region of Accra, Ghana.

Chart 26 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Assessing anthropogenic disturbances

- Improvement of land use / land cover data

Global MODIS standard LULC product (MCD12Q1) Enhanced DLR LULC map (MODIS, ASAR, TanDEM-X)

Gessner, U.; Hartmann, A., Huth, J., Machwitz, M., Naeimi, V., Esch, T., Dech, S., Kuenzer, C. (2014): Exploiting multi-sensoral earth observation time series for

regional land cover mapping. 5th Workshop of the EARSeL Special Interest Group on Land Use and Land Cover, 17-18 March 2014, Berlin, Germany.

Conclusions and Outlook

- GUF layer can significantly improve the description of settlements pattern

and population distribution.

- GUF data set and add-on analysis techniques facilitate the effective and

efficient spatiotemporal characterization of land consumption.

- GUF data and methods can help to advance the ecological understanding

of drivers affecting changes in biodiversity patterns.

- Global quality assessment and improvement of GUF technique and layer.

- Set-up of global human settlements inventory.

- Systematic involvement and support of user communities.

- Integration of additional parameters (urban morphology).

- Implementation of monitoring functionality (Sentinel program).

Chart 27 ZSL Symposium on Remote Sensing for Conservation, 22-23 May 2014, London, UK

Chart 28 EORSA, 2012, June 8-11, Shanghai, China