Can the Future EnMAP Mission Contribute to Urban Applications? A Literature Survey

Remote Sensing

Wieke Heldens¹  Uta Heiden¹  Thomas Esch¹  Enrico Stein² 

[1] Department of Land Applications, German Remote Sensing Data Center, German Aerospace Center, Muenchener Strasse 20, D-82234 Wessling, Germany; E-Mails:;Department of Civil Crisis Information and Geo-Risks, German Remote Sensing Data Center, German Aerospace Center, Muenchener Strasse 20, D-82234 Wessling, Germany; E-Mail:

关键词: urban areas;    surface material;    EnMAP;    imaging spectroscopy;    hyperspectral;    spectral unmixing;    urban application;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs3091817

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

With urban populations and their footprints growing globally, the need to assess the dynamics of the urban environment increases. Remote sensing is one approach that can analyze these developments quantitatively with respect to spatially and temporally large scale changes. With the 2015 launch of the spaceborne EnMAP mission, a new hyperspectral sensor with high signal-to-noise ratio at medium spatial resolution, and a 21 day global revisit capability will become available. This paper presents the results of a literature survey on existing applications and image analysis techniques in the context of urban remote sensing in order to identify and outline potential contributions of the future EnMAP mission. Regarding urban applications, four frequently addressed topics have been identified: urban development and planning, urban growth assessment, risk and vulnerability assessment and urban climate. The requirements of four application fields and associated image processing techniques used to retrieve desired parameters and create geo-information products have been reviewed. As a result, we identified promising research directions enabling the use of EnMAP for urban studies. First and foremost, research is required to analyze the spectral information content of an EnMAP pixel used to support material-based land cover mapping approaches. This information can subsequently be used to improve urban indicators, such as imperviousness. Second, we identified the global monitoring of urban areas as a promising field of investigation taking advantage of EnMAP’s spatial coverage and revisit capability. However, owing to the limitations of EnMAP’s spatial resolution for urban applications, research should also focus on hyperspectral resolution enhancement to enable retrieving material information on sub-pixel level.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.