Scope and topics
Cities are at the frontline of climate change—both as hotspots of greenhouse gas emissions and as zones of high exposure to its impacts. Increasing temperatures, extreme rainfall, and the spread of impervious surfaces intensify urban heat islands, flooding, and environmental degradation. These challenges require robust, spatially explicit, and timely information to support climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.
Earth Observation (EO) provides unparalleled capabilities for monitoring, analyzing, and modelling the urban environment. Advances in EO sensors, data fusion, and machine learning now enable detailed assessments of urban form, surface characteristics, ecosystem services, and climate impacts. Beyond static mapping, EO data increasingly serve as critical inputs to urban climate and ecosystem models, supporting simulation and forecasting of processes such as heat stress, stormwater runoff, and carbon dynamics.
This special session aims to bring together the community of researchers and practitioners working at the interface of EO data, environmental modelling, and urban climate science. It will provide a platform to exchange recent developments, highlight operational applications, and explore pathways for integrating EO into evidence-based urban climate policies and sustainability initiatives.
List of topics
We invite contributions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Urban ecosystem and land-surface modelling for climate resilience and
adaptation. - Mapping and monitoring of imperviousness and built-up structures using EO
data. - Detection and quantification of urban vegetation and trees, including their
role in cooling, carbon sequestration, and flood mitigation. - Urban heat island analysis and mitigation, leveraging EO-based surface
temperature retrievals and multi-source data integration. - EO-driven heavy rainfall and pluvial flood modelling in urban environments.
- Data fusion and machine learning approaches for integrated urban climate
and environmental analytics. - EO indicators for urban climate adaptation and mitigation, aligned with SDG
11 (Sustainable Cities) and SDG 13 (Climate Action). - EO-informed urban climate models linking observations with physical and
empirical simulation frameworks. - Integration of EO with urban digital twins, IoT sensors, or socio-economic
datasets for multi-dimensional climate risk assessment.
Organisers
Dr. John Friesen, john.friesen@uni-wuerzburg.de, University of Würzburg,Germany
Dr. Tobias Leichtle, Tobias.leichtle@dlr.de, German Aerospace Center, Germany
Dr. Thilo Erbertseder, thilo.erbertseder@dlr.de, German Aerospace Center,Germany