Abstract
Abstract. The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) is supported by the European Commission, Joint Research Center (JRC) in the frame of his institutional research activities. Scope of GHSL is developing, testing and applying the technologies and analysis methods integrated in the JRC Global Human Settlement analysis platform for applications in support to global disaster risk reduction initiatives (DRR) and regional analysis in the frame of the European Cohesion policy. GHSL analysis platform uses geo-spatial data, primarily remotely sensed and population. GHSL also cooperates with the Group on Earth Observation on SB-04-Global Urban Observation and Information, and various international partners andWorld Bank and United Nations agencies. Some preliminary results integrating global human settlement information extracted from Landsat data records of the last 40 years and population data are presented.
Highlights
Global actors and global decision making processes need accurate and globally consistent data for evidence-driven reasoning: testing of hypothesis, development of concepts, monitoring and understanding of trends, and exploration of alternative scenarios
The understanding of the global human settlements is absolutely critical for a large number of issues including housing and urban development, poverty reduction, sustainable development, climate change, crisis management and disaster risk reduction, just to name a few
On the passive remote sensing technology, a method aiming to global urban area mapping integrating ASTER data at 15m-resolution with extensive GIS data used in post-processing and information masking was proposed in by (Miyazaki et al, 2013)
Summary
Global actors and global decision making processes need accurate and globally consistent data for evidence-driven reasoning: testing of hypothesis, development of concepts, monitoring and understanding of trends, and exploration of alternative scenarios. The understanding of the global human settlements is absolutely critical for a large number of issues including housing and urban development, poverty reduction, sustainable development, climate change, crisis management and disaster risk reduction, just to name a few. Despite their importance and despite the long history of human development in the surveys techniques, apparently basic questions about global human settlements still remain unanswered, as for example: how many square/cubic meters we have built in the last 40 years?, what are the specific spatial-temporal trends and patterns?, what are the occupancy conditions and density of persons in these spaces? Extensive tests using the Landsat data archive of the last 40 years have been conducted during 2014: some first results combining human settlement information extracted from satellite data and population data are showed here
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