Earth Observation for Urban Planning and Management: State of the Art and Recommendations for Application of Earth Observation in Urban Planning

In their report entitled ‘State of the World Cities 2006/7’ (United Nations, 2006) the UN predicts that globally, 2007 will see more people living in urban rather than rural areas. The number of urban dwellers is predicted to rise to almost 5 billion by 2030, which will be 62% of the estimated global population of 8.1 billion. Cities and urban areas will have to expand to accommodate such increases in population, resulting in a variety of social and environmental problems. The key to successfully survive the rapid urbanization of the countryside is to provide accurate and timely spatial information that will assist decisionmakers in understanding, managing, and planning the continuously changing environment. The synoptic view of cities afforded by Earth Observation (EO)1 offers great potential for data collection over urban areas. With some major paradigm shifts in EO technology over the last 30 years, it is appropriate to examine how EO can now be better harnessed to assist urban planners and managers, and what issues should be exploited by the research and academic community to further its practical application. To this end, a workshop on Earth Observation for Urban Planning and Management was held on November 20-21st 2006 in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s status as possibly the world’s most densely built modern city, and thus being in need of the most innovative and efficient planning procedures available, provided the catalyst for this meeting. Critical issues were examined with Hong Kong being the point of reference. Delegates comprised an international group of researchers and practitioners from Hong Kong government departments, providing a mixture of top-down demonstrations and case studies, with bottom-up feedback from user groups. The workshop addressed 4 major application areas: environmental monitoring, land use/cover mapping, planning, and geotechnical monitoring. Resulting from the workshop, observations were made on current and potential applications of EO technology, current data qualities and acquisition technologies, major impediments to their more widespread use, and recommendations for future development. This article discusses the Workshop's proceedings, findings, and observations dealing with the aforementioned issues.