Abstract
Information about green spaces available in a city is essential for urban planning. Urban green areas are generally assessed through environmental indicators that reflect the city’s quality of life and urban comfort. A methodology based on 3D measure and analysis of green urban areas at the city scale is presented. Two products are proposed: (1) measuring current vegetation cover at ground level through object-oriented classification of WorldView-2 imagery; and (2) estimating potential green cover at rooftop level using 3D data obtained by LiDAR sensor. The methodology, implemented in Lisbon, Portugal, demonstrates that: (1) remote sensing imagery provides powerful tools for master planning and policy analysis regarding green urban area expansion; and (2) measures of urban sustainability cannot be solely based on indicators obtained from 2D geographical information. In fact, 2D urban indicators should be complemented by 3D modelling of geographic data.
Highlights
Ecosystem services provided by green urban spaces have been an important issue in urban planning and public policy for some years [1,2]
The results indicate that: (1) booth rooftops and podiums were not adequately used for green spaces; and (2) morphological indicators like building density, number of stories and podium area play an important role in its spatial distribution
To measure vegetation at ground level, an Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) image from the summer period obtained from WorldView-2 image (WV-2) imagery was constructed
Summary
Ecosystem services provided by green urban spaces have been an important issue in urban planning and public policy for some years [1,2]. Covering roofs with vegetation—i.e., green rooftops—helps to mitigate the urban heat island effect by modifying the buildings’ microclimate and the local climate of the city [4,5,6,7,8,9]. Green roofs offer many other public and private benefits. Private benefits include energy savings by decreasing indoor cooling load demand, noise attenuation, longevity of the waterproof membrane and green space available for recreation [4,15,16,17]
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