Users in transport and infrastructure apply to all manufacturing and physical supply in land but also marine domains including transport & logistics, utilities, construction, communication & connectivity, and tourism.
The users in smart cities include urban planners, architects, spatial planning offices, urban policy makers. The users benefit from EO information through map information about urban structures and related land use when managing land use, climate change adaptation, and urban green infrastructure. Typical use cases include Urban adaptation to climate change and Green infrastructure and its ecosystem services to increase quality of life of citizens (https://land.copernicus.eu/user-corner/land-use-cases)
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.
EO is capable of monitoring infrastrcture in general, i.e. buildings (and their construction) and transport networks (roads, rails). Additionally, infrastructure for renewable energy harvesting (solar and wind farms, hydroelectric powerplants) and identification of suitable sites (through mapping solar radiation, wind roses, speed and direction, hydrological network mapping). A basis is land surface mapping for deriving digital elevation models (DEMs) that is required for modelling renewable energy potential and for spatial planning and landscape visibility analysis (visual impact assessments for planned infrastructure). Further, EO is capable of assessing damage from industrial accidents. A wide range of EO technologies is used here, infrastrcture can be directly detected and mapped with optical and SAR sensors, where the resolution depends on the targeted assets. DEMs can be generated from SAR and stereographic optical data. Wind energy related parameters can be derived from satellites focused on atmosphere and weather monitoring. Further, there are various GI methods in use, too (in particular focused on spatial planning and impact assessment).