Climate Change in Cities - Can Remote Sensing Help to Optimise Mitigation Strategies?

摘要

Urban planners become more aware that climate change is likely to have influence on the liveability in cities. Therefore, the number of planning authorities increases that want to evaluate the climatic effects of urban developments. However, the information required to do so is often not easily available. Remote sensing data provides independent, area wide and up-to-date spatial information. Therefore, this contribution addresses the question if remote sensing techniques can help to optimise mitigation strategies for climate change in cities. Several parameters describing the urban climate can be directly mapped by remote sensing, such as albedo and surface temperature. However, the main use of remote sensing is expected in the mapping of the urban land cover and morphology. The urban climate is strongly influenced by the spatial characteristics of the city. Area wide maps of spatial parameters such as impervious surface or vegetation fraction can provide insight in expected climatologic situations because of the strong relationship of these spatial parameters to climate and humidity. Climate models, used to evaluate different planning scenarios, can make advantage of accurate spatial description of the area of interest. However, existing climate models will need adaptation to be able to use the remote sensing data.