New Research Article published - Achievements and Planned Evolution of Global Urban Footprint Data

DLR has recently published a new research article related to the Global Urban Footprint layer - one of the key datasets available at U-TEP. The publication provides a comprehensive summary of the major achievements related to the Global Urban Footprint (GUF) initiative, with dedicated sections focusing on aspects such as the methodology (including an automated post-editing based on U-TEP’s TimeScan data), basic product characteristics (specification, accuracy, global figures on urbanization derived from GUF), the user community, and the already initiated future roadmap of follow-on activities and products. The active community of >250 institutions already working with the GUF data documents the relevance and suitability of the GUF initiative and the underlying high-resolution SAR imagery with respect to the provision of key information on the human presence on earth and the global human settlements properties and patterns, respectively. Recently, the GUF has also been used as an input dataset for NASA’s enhanced Black Marble Nighttime Lights Product Suite.

Reference:
Esch, T., Bachofer, F., Heldens, W., Hirner, A., Marconcini, M., Palacios-Lopez, D., Roth, A., Üreyen, S., Zeidler, J., Dech, S., Gorelick, N. (2018): Where we live – A summary of the achievements and planned evolution of the Global Urban Footprint. Remote Sens. 2018, 10, 895; doi:10.3390/rs10060895