Remote Sensing for Urban Environment Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

In the past few decades, cities have experienced explosive growth in both natural size and population, which is posing serious challenges regarding the ecological and environmental function of cities. Rapid urbanization has caused massive undesirable social-economic and eco-environmental problems, such as environmental pollution, urban heat island, energy shortage, population migration, social welfare and so on. Therefore, the world needs scientific knowledge to reduce these risks and meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the context of global climate change.Urban remote sensing has been evolving consistently over the last fifty years. Key contributions of urban remote sensing include, but are not limited to, the characterization of urban areas, urban land cover changes, human activities and thermal remote sensing of urban climates. Compared with field survey data, remote sensing images provide continual improved spatial resolution that can be applied to numerous natural and anthropogenic issues in urban areas across different spatial-temporal scales worldwide. In addition, emerging image-processing methods and approaches like big data, deep learning, and cloud computing will also advance the applications of remote sensing data. Remote sensing plays a significant role in understanding the urban environment and providing practical wisdom for urban sustainable development.

The potential topics in this Special Issue include but are not limited to the following:
- New methods for quantifying urbanization;
- Relationships between urban development and climate change;
- Mapping and monitoring urban social-economic, ecological and environmental problems (e.g., nighttime lights, urban heat island, urban pollution, urban flood, urban associated disaster);
- Mechanisms of urban landscape change;
- Cooling effect of urban green and blue spaces;
- New approaches for fusing different resolution data;
- Integrated urban-rural development;
- UAV applications in urban area;
- Modeling and predicting urban development.

Dr. Junfu Fan
Dr. Chaobin Yang
Dr. Wenjie Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• urban remote sensing
• urbanization
• urban climate
• urban land use and land cover
• urban planning
• urban ecology
• urban heat island
• urban green infrastructure
• urban thermal environment
• nighttime lights
• impervious surface area
• urban ecosystem service
• urban morphology
• land surface temperature
• air temperature
• smart city
• city traffic
• local climate zones
• urban pollution
• unmanned aerial vehicles