### UAVs and Data Capabilities  
The urban environment plays a significant role in climate change, both as a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and as a site of vulnerability to its impacts. Understanding the dynamics of climate change in urban areas is crucial for developing effective mitigation and adaptation strategies. Data collection, monitoring, and analysis in the urban environment are essential components of climate change research, providing valuable insights into the interactions between urbanization, climate, and human activities. Satellite imagery has traditionally been a valuable tool for monitoring and analyzing climate change in urban areas. However, there are existing gaps in satellite imagery that limit its effectiveness in capturing the fine-scale details and monitoring dynamic urban environments. These gaps include limitations in the spatial resolution, temporal coverage, and cloud cover interference [40; 41]. These limitations hinder accurately assessing and monitoring climate-related phenomena in urban areas. An essential characteristic of UAVs is their coverage and the resolution of the images. Figure 1 shows the scale of detail that can be achieved with drones and other imaging systems. The figure shows the application in an agriculture field; however, it is helpful to identify the scales that can be managed with UAVs. Satellite imagery covers the globe and can be used in applications on the Kilometers scale. On the other hand, UAVs can cover areas of several kilometers of extension and, at the same time, can identify details at a 1 cm scale or less. Therefore, UAVs can identify detailed defects or elaborate inventories of several kilometers [42]. Moreover, UAVs offer unique advantages over conventional geomatics approaches for capturing the highly detailed 3D spatial data of study sites, as illustrated in Figure 1. Compared to terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) systems, UAVs with LiDAR provide faster area coverage and greater flexibility to survey complex topographies and vertical structures [2]. While TLS involves fixed scan positions with occlusion gaps, UAVs can fly multiple ideal trajectories to minimize shadowing and occlusions in point clouds [43]. UAV LiDAR additionally captures geometries inaccessible from the ground, such as rooftops. Meanwhile, versus crewed aircraft LiDAR, UAVs achieve an improved low-altitude measurement resolution, down to centimeters, and cost savings of up to 80% [44]. Their capacity to hover and maneuver facilitates denser precision scanning. For data acquisition technologies, satellites, UAVs, helicopters, and airplanes each have advantages and limitations regarding the field of view, payload capacity, operating costs, and availability. As illustrated in Figure 2, satellites can cover vast areas with revisit times of days to weeks, but provide relatively low-resolution imagery from their high-altitude orbits at 400-800 km above Earth [46]. In contrast, UAVs fly at altitudes below 7 km, achieving centimeter-scale image resolutions over areas up to a few square kilometers [2]. Their flexibility and low cost have fueled UAV adoption; however, the limited battery life restricts their flight duration to about 30 min. Manned helicopters exceed UAV flight endurance, with large models capable of carrying heavy sensors for hours of operation. However, the acquisition and operational expenses are over 50-times higher than UAVs [47]. Airplanes also have extended flight times and can carry substantial payloads with lower costs than helicopters, but lack hover and low-altitude flight capabilities. Figure 1: (**a**) UAVs and different geomatics technologies; (**b**) UAV coverage scale compared to other data collection technologies [42; 45]. Figure 2: Comparison between UAVs and conventional aerial technologies regarding resolution, payload capacity, and operation costs. Based on [48]. Additionally, while satellites achieve comprehensive coverage, UAVs fill a vital niche by providing ultra-high-resolution images below what most commercial satellites offer [49].