Description
Cities around the world face numerous environmental hazards, such as extreme heat events, landslides, pollution, and flooding. Cities must monitor and address these hazards to reduce risks to, and enhance resilience of, their residents to climate change impacts. Earth observations allow cities and other types of human settlements to be monitored and understood in comprehensive ways, deliver up-to-date insights to decision makers, and are essential for reporting on progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This three-part introductory training provides an overview of the Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements, an online knowledge resource that shares ready-to-use Earth observation data sets and tools. These resources can be applied in policy areas that are important to resilient and sustainable cities. Such areas include sustainable urban planning, adequate housing, access to public transport, and access to public spaces. Earth observation data provide significant cost and time savings in urban monitoring and indicator measurement, particularly over large areas or areas where little data is available. The Toolkit also shares national and city experiences in using spatial data and analysis for monitoring progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals and the New Urban Agenda, and enabling successful, evidence-based decision making.
This training series is a collaboration between NASA’s Applied Remote Sensing Training Program (ARSET), UN Habitat, Group on Earth Observations (GEO) EO4SDG initiative, GEO Human Planet initiative, and the CEOS Working Group on Capacity Building & Data Democracy (WGCapD).