THE POTENTIAL USE OF NEW HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE DATA FOR URBAN AND REGIONAL PLANNING

The remits of regional planning and environmental monitoring are growing steadily. Planning data and status information need to made available in ever more up-to-date form and with high spatial resolution. Given the constraints on public funding, this demand for data can only be met future using new forms of satellite sensor in outer space. The Indian IRS1C is currently delivering data with 5-meter ground resolution, and it is expected that the American satellite image sensors Ikonos 1 and Quickbird will shortly be producing data in the 1-meter resolution range. On the basis of new colour composites, this paper assesses IRS-1C data in terms of pronouncement value, operational processing strategy, and suitability for diverse planning requirements. The conclusion arrived at is that this data is an ideal vehicle with which to up-date land-use plans, municipal survey maps, cartographic material covering urban structure types and biotopes, surface-sealing surveys, working maps for landscape planning as well as providing the basis for general data up-dating at a scale of 1:25,000. Further areas of application such as 3-D representations on the basis of digital relief models for the purposes of assessing land formations for large building ventures (wind-power installations, bridges, etc.) or the identification of biodiversity using IRS colour composites are currently being scrutinised. The research project is funded by the German Research Community (DFG). 1 NEW CHALLENGES FOR REGIONAL PLANNING Globalisation is posing new challenges for regional planning. There is pressure to capture increasingly complex processes virtually as they happen. International competition is intensifying, leading to a situation where municipalities and regions are having to vie with one another for investment funds. The upshot is that, even in the case of projects with a significant spatial-planning dimension, the planning process is subject to tight deadlines. An example of this can be found in the companies of the microelectronics sector, who are compelled to plan and commission their extremely expensive, surface-intensive »fablines« in very short timelines. Planning is also being confronted with new tasks as a result of the demand for sustainable spatial development. This necessitates an exact analysis of the spatial impact of measures planned as well as the planning and weighting of compensatory measures. If the causes of environmental protection and nature conservation are to be successfully pursued and the effects of spatial measures evaluated, it is essential that natural spaces be inventoried beforehand. In particular, larger spaces are only feasible if up-to-the-minute data on current spatial utilisation and its structures are available to facilitate comparison of large areas. Satellite-based remote sensing is ideally placed to remedy this shortage of topical data, especially acute in the case of environmental lead planning. Monitoring the success of measures initiated, to limit surface use for example, is made significantly easier. The increasingly detailed nature of planning issues and the demands of information processing comprehensive stocks of digital base data at planning and environmental agencies can now be taken as given are causing expectations in regards to data performance (e.g. locational accuracy and data attribution) to be raised. Compelling visualisation of planning schemes has also come to be expected. This dimension is set to become more and more crucial both to political implementation and to public participation. Whilst data processing tools have been constantly refined in the form of geoinformation systems over recent years, there are still large shortcomings in regards to methods of cost-effective, up-to-the-minute surveying of the inventoried situation. Regional planners, for instance, do not have access to wholly up-to-date cartographic material on built-up areas (planning scale 1:100,000), municipal environmental departments are short of information on biotope evolution, land surveyors departments are short of current topographical base information for the up-dating of 1:25,000-scale topographical maps and urban planners do not have up-to-the-minute actual-utilisation data (Meinel et al., 1998). New developments in the satellite image market will help overcome such deficits. 2 DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SATELLITE IMAGE