MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint

A Key Step in Characterizing the Global Human
Settlements Pattern from Space
T. Esch, W. Heldens, A. Hirner, M. Keil, M. Marconcini, A. Roth, J. Zeidler
German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Earth Observation Center (EOC)
German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD)
Land Surface (LAX)

We went to explore the moon and in fact discovered the Earth

(Eugene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17)

We went to explore the moon and in fact discovered the Earth

(Eugene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17)

Urban Area Monitoring

Urban Area Monitoring

We went to explore the moon and in fact discovered the Earth

(Eugene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17)

We went to explore the moon and in fact discovered the Earth

(Eugene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17)

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Mapping of Human Settlements

Source: Potere et al., 2009

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Mapping of Human Settlements

MOD500 data of Munich region

Official survey data (DLM-DE)

Global Urban Footprint (GUF )

based on the TanDEM-X mission

Worldwide inventory of human settlements (urban & rural) using one global coverage of SAR data
with 3 m ground resolution collected by the satellites TerraSAR-X / TanDEM-X in 2011-2013.
Analysis of 182.249 images (308 TB), processing and management of >20 million data sets.
Output is binary settlement mask with spatial resolution of 0.4 (12m) for scientific and commercial use.
Release of public domain GUF with ~2.8 (84m) spatial resolution for any non-profit use in 2016.

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint Processor

Fully-automatic, generic and autonomous processing environment orchestrating
extensive suite of processing and analysis modules.
UF-Processor can generate ~4000-6000 GUF products per day (~8-12 TB).
Set of automated post-editing procedures for large-scale quality enhancement.
integrated
TanDEM-X
processor
(ITP)

Final Urban Footprint mosaic

Classification

Mosaicking
and
post-editing

Feature
Extraction

Data base (W42, PostgreSQL/Postgis)

Processing management system (PSM)

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint Processor

DLM-DE

MOD500

GUF (2.8)

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint Processor

GUF 0.4 for scientific use

GUF 2.8 public domain version

Europe

North-East United States

Asia

Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam

Moscow, Russia

Cairo, Egypt

Tokio, Japan

Delhi, India

Accra, Ghana

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

GUF product (2.8) of Minneapolis region, USA

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

GUF product (2.8) of area Brussel-Hasselt-Maastricht-Liege-Namur (Belgium-Netherlands)

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint

GUF data (2.8) of Sydney

Night Lights image of Sydney

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint

GUF product (2.8) of Montreal, Canada

Urban area provided by GlobCover 2009

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint

GUF mask (2.8) for Delhi area, India

MODIS 500 product for Delhi area, India

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Global Urban Footprint

GUF mask (2.8) for Nairobi region, Kenia

Landsat-derived urban footprint for Nairobi region, Kenia

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Quality Assessment

Kappa: 0.75

GUF (2.8)

Kappa: 0.74

European
Urban Atlas

Reference
building layer

Kappa: 0.40

MODIS 500

Kappa: 0.70

Kappa: 0.34

FTS European
Soil Sealing

GlobCover
2009

Ruhr test region, Germany

Tuscany test site, Italy

Relative frequency-size distributions

displaying the range and occurrences of
settlement patch sizes.

Analysis of patch size-dependent b)

completeness (TPR), c) correctness
(PPV) and overall quality (F)

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Outlook: Analysis of Settlement Patterns

GUF, Germany

Characterizing the local relevance of settlements using spatial network analysis

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Outlook: Analysis of Settlement Patterns

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Outlook: Spatiotemporal Monitoring

Historic:
ERS
ASAR
(Landsat)
Future:
Sentinel
(Landsat)

2003
2013
Development of
settlements in Lagos
region derived with
Envisat-ASAR

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MUAS 2015 | 04-05 November 2015 | ESA-ESRIN | Frascati, Italy

Outlook: Building Volume

Average building height (120x120m) derived from TanDEM-X IDEM for Dongying, China

Thank you for your attention!

Dr. Thomas Esch

Telephone: +49 8153 28-3721 | Email: thomas.esch@dlr.de