Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform
Creators: name: German Aerospace Center (DLR)
name: Terradue
name: Gisat
name: IT4Innovations
name: Brockmann Consult
Publisher: name: GEO Knowledge Hub
Year: 2022
Subjects: Urban
Population
Web service
Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements
Settlement
Impervious Surface
Code: Executable
Data Source: VIIRS
Data Source: Landsat

description: The Urban Era
A large-scale transformation has occurred on Earth, largely ignored in headline stories on the topic of global change – for some years now, the number of people living in urban areas has exceeded that of those living in rural regions. The trend towards urbanisation shows no sign of abating. In particular, cities in Asia and Africa are expanding at a staggering pace. Megacities are springing up in a matter of years and urban sprawls are emerging, spreading across extensive swathes of landscapes that, until recently, had been untouched by development or used for agricultural production. Hence, the future is urban. Today, approximately 7.2 billion people inhabit Earth. By 2050, this number will have risen to nine billion, 70 percent of which will be living in cities. As a result, urban areas will account for 90 percent of population growth, 80 percent of increased prosperity and around 60 percent of energy consumption. Therefore, urban conurbations will occupy a key role as centres of political, economic and cultural life. They will exemplify the future, defining how the coming generations will live and work.
How can the opportunities that urbanisation presents be put to good use? How can the negative effects of such rapid city growth be mitigated or avoided? This is one of the central challenges that society will face over the coming decades. The TEP Urban platform is providing data, methods and infrastructure to help creating sustainable urban environments. Managed urban development requires knowledge – about how dynamic urban systems interact with the natural and man-made landscape that surrounds them. To what extent do cities damage the environment by consuming land and resources, polluting the air and the water, or by reducing biodiversity? To what extent are cities threatened by natural hazards and climate change? How have urban regions developed in the past, and how should they do so in future?
Urbanisation playing out across the world has regional roots, but it also comes with common drivers and causes. A global view is required to identify what they are. It is here that Earth observation can make a valuable contribution. It helps differentiate between urban and rural settlement forms and to introduce systems of categorisation and delineation. Satellite-based geo-information delivers a current and comprehensive image of the built environment, while at the same time documenting its changes over time.
TEP Urban Concept
Sustainable urban and rural development requires knowledge about status, properties, cross-linking and dynamics of settlements and their hinterland. Here, key elements are effective and efficient instruments for the observation, analysis and control of the built environment.
In this context the TEP Urban platform aims at opening up new opportunities to enable the creation and safeguarding of livable cities by exploring:

Unique EO capabilities in Europe;
Big data perspective;
High-level IT-infrastructures;
Massive processing power;
Vast expert knowledge;
New media and ways of communication;
Increasing connectivity and networks.
By exploiting these opportunities TEP Urban will contribute to initiate step changes regarding:

Remote processing (users-to-the-data);
Enabling technology (large-scale exploitation, timeliness);
Distribution of expertise (increase assets);
Sharing data and technology (innovation, benchmarking);
Open, integrative, participatory, collaborative concepts (community stimulation, outreach).
With these objectives and perspective, TEP Urban is finally expected to function as:

Enabling technology,

Technical: Linking big data, IT-infrastructures, processing and analysis solutions;
Thematic: Provision of standardised, new, and tailored products and services;
Societal: Improving access to and distribution of data, methods and information.
Instrument to gain of knowledge on the urban system:

Contribution to close gaps in earth system science;
Increased efficiency, effectiveness and sustainability of functions and services in policy, planning, economy, and science).
Market place of ideas and driver of innovation;
Access point for and network of stakeholders and experts;
Seed point for the animation of new user communities outside EO/geo-sector.
The TEP Urban technical concept is based on a generic, modular, multi-purpose design facilitating maximum flexibility with respect to the adaptation to and integration of user requirements, application scenarios, processing and analysis technologies, and IT infrastructures. A schematic view of the basic TEP Urban elements is given in the figure below. Considering the thematic and technical objectives of TEP Urban, the key technical functionalities of the TEP Urban architecture are:

Web-based, modular platform employing generic, distributed high-level computing infrastructures (Platform as a Service – PaaS);
High-performance access to thematic data (Information as a Service – InaaS);
State-of-the art pre-processing, analysis, and visualisation techniques (Software as a Service – SaaS);
Customising functionalities for transfer of algorithms/products into services;
Functionalities to support networking, communication, and dissemination activities.
The TEP Urban platform is not designed to provide direct access or distribute Earth observation data.
Related materials
This resource is associated with the Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements. If you want to learn more about it, please, check the EO Toolkit portal (https://eotoolkit.unhabitat.org/), a place where you will find use cases, learning material, and many other tools and resources related to the Sustainable Development Goal 11 and New Urban Agenda.