Monitoring the built environment provides information about urban structures, transport networks and particular infrastructure, e.g. dedicated to energy provision. It covers all urban and infrastructure related service/applications on site development information, planning support or suitability analysis. As well, it includes pressure and threats analysis on the urban areas.
The full range of EO satellite sensors are capable of monitoring particular aspects of urban areas. The most relevant include SAR satellites such as TerraSAR-X that distinguish between urban fabric and other land cover. Further, optical satellites in the resolution range HR and VHR are used to map imperviousness and soil sealing. Beyond such land cover classifications with low granularity, HR and VHR data are used for producing detailed land use and land cover classifications that distinguish different settlement densities or, in combination with additional data, different land use such as transport, residential etc. as defined in Classification schemes specialized on urban areas. Airborne laser scanning (and stereographic analysis) maps building and vegetation heights. InSAR methods allow to measure land subsidence that is highly relevant e.g. in coastal cities close to or below the sea surface elevation. Night-time optical data maps lights. Thermal sensors allow mapping the heat that is radiated from cities. Typical applications include monitoring urban growth/sprawl, transport networks, urban heat islands, and generating city maps and 3D city models for urban planning that are relevant to users in smart cities and in local/regional planning.