The world’s population is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, according to the UN Department of Economics and Social Affairs. Urban areas are already home to 55% of the world’s population and that figure is expected to grow to 68% by 2050. Rapid and unplanned urbanisation, combined with the challenges brought by climate change, can lead to an increase in air pollution, higher vulnerability to disasters, as well as issues related to the management of resources such as water, raw materials and energy.
To improve the understanding of current trends in global urbanisation, ESA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), in collaboration with the Google Earth Engine team, are jointly developing the World Settlement Footprint – the world’s most comprehensive dataset on human settlement.
The World Settlement Footprint suite consists of several different products, two of which have been publicly released this week during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) for the Cities, Regions & Built Environment Day: The World Settlement Footprint 2019 (WSF 2019) and the World Settlement Footprint Evolution (WSF Evolution). These products were built using millions of hours of compute time with Google Earth Engine, Google’s platform for geospatial data analysis.
The WSF 2019, which provides information on global human settlements with unprecedented detail and precision, features data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions, while the WSF Evolution has been generated by processing seven million images from the US Landsat satellite collected between 1985 and 2015 and illustrates the worldwide growth of human settlements on a year-by-year basis.
This unprecedented collection of global products on human settlement advances our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale.
The World Settlement Footprint suite consists of several different products, two of which have been publicly released this week during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) for the Cities, Regions & Built Environment Day: The World Settlement Footprint 2019 (WSF 2019) and the World Settlement Footprint Evolution (WSF Evolution). These products were built using millions of hours of compute time with Google Earth Engine, Google’s platform for geospatial data analysis.
The WSF 2019, which provides information on global human settlements with unprecedented detail and precision, features data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions, while the WSF Evolution has been generated by processing seven million images from the US Landsat satellite collected between 1985 and 2015 and illustrates the worldwide growth of human settlements on a year-by-year basis.
This unprecedented collection of global products on human settlement advances our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale.
The World Settlement Footprint suite consists of several different products, two of which have been publicly released this week during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) for the Cities, Regions & Built Environment Day: The World Settlement Footprint 2019 (WSF 2019) and the World Settlement Footprint Evolution (WSF Evolution). These products were built using millions of hours of compute time with Google Earth Engine, Google’s platform for geospatial data analysis.
The WSF 2019, which provides information on global human settlements with unprecedented detail and precision, features data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions, while the WSF Evolution has been generated by processing seven million images from the US Landsat satellite collected between 1985 and 2015 and illustrates the worldwide growth of human settlements on a year-by-year basis.
This unprecedented collection of global products on human settlement advances our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale.
The World Settlement Footprint suite consists of several different products, two of which have been publicly released this week during the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) for the Cities, Regions & Built Environment Day: The World Settlement Footprint 2019 (WSF 2019) and the World Settlement Footprint Evolution (WSF Evolution). These products were built using millions of hours of compute time with Google Earth Engine, Google’s platform for geospatial data analysis.
The WSF 2019, which provides information on global human settlements with unprecedented detail and precision, features data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 missions, while the WSF Evolution has been generated by processing seven million images from the US Landsat satellite collected between 1985 and 2015 and illustrates the worldwide growth of human settlements on a year-by-year basis.
This unprecedented collection of global products on human settlement advances our understanding of urbanisation on a global scale.
“We need to drive towards building sustainable cities and human settlements, and this depends on how well we measure these areas and how well we can predict the growth in all these cities in the future. I believe Earth observation and geospatial technologies give us the tools needed in order for us to grow in this direction.”
Sameh Wahba, Director of the World Bank’s Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice, added, “Big data is extensively used to understand and analyse current development trends, key challenges and future urbanisation scenarios across regions. The partnership with ESA, DLR and other organisations over the past years allows us to extend the frontiers of our knowledge and utilise evidence-based data in our decision-making.
“Using the World Settlement Footprint Evolution, our team has been tracking the flood risk exposure of growing cities around the world, such as Bangkok, Thailand. The data suggest that there is a worrying trend we observe: new and unplanned settlements in high-risk flooded areas have grown significantly, especially in low and middle-income countries. The high-resolution data allows us to work with our partners around the world to determine how this risk is evolving and identifying the drivers of such high-risk urban growth.”
The World Settlement Footprint 2019 and the World Settlement Footprint Evolution are accessible from the Geoservice portal of DLR’s Earth Observation Center. Both products can be downloaded by clicking on the links below.
Abonnez-vous à notre newsletter pour recevoir les dernières actualités, les mises à jour des missions et des informations exclusives directement dans votre boîte de réception. Soyez parmi les premiers informés de nos prochains projets et avancées.
