5 Ways for Cities to Utilise Satellite Data

Artikkelikuva: 5 Ways for Cities to Utilise Satellite Data

In September, we attended the URBIS24 – Urban Insights from Space – event held by the European Space Agency (ESA) in Rome to hear about the latest developments in the field of satellite data solutions.

European satellite data, provided free of charge, could help city planners in a multitude of ways, serving as an excellent addition to the data already available to cities. Until now, many satellite data solutions have focused on charting areas outside cities, such as forests, oceans or agricultural areas, but operators have recently begun to look into how it could also benefit densely populated areas. Because of this, the event was aimed particularly at representatives of municipalities.

Cities, including Helsinki, continue to underutilise space technologies. For this reason, Forum Virium Helsinki has been involved in several projects since 2021 – SPOTTED, Regions4Climate, SPACE4Cities and PCP-WISE – to learn more about the benefits of satellite data and how the City of Helsinki could best utilise it to supplement other data sources. We were delighted to learn that our SPACE4Cities project was familiar to others at the event, and we got to provide information about our €2.8 million pre-commercial procurement project due to launch in January 2025 to providers in the field. 

Head of Climate Action Rune Floberhagen from the ESA emphasised in his opening speech at the event that the most important purpose of observing the earth is currently to overcome global climate challenges. Coordinating Editor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Karen Seto from Yale University added that cities are in many ways vulnerable to climate change. However, data is needed to support climate policies, and satellite data continues to be a relatively unknown concept. Seto commented that cities should be incentivised to become satellite data users from a financial angle, as satellite data can be used to predict and assess the costs of damage caused by phenomena such as floods, forest fires, heat and drought. This could facilitate the harnessing of cities to serve as drivers of climate change mitigation. 

URBIS24
SPACE4Cities Project Manager Renske Martijnse-Hartikka and PCP-WISE Project Manager Meri Vainio at the URBIS24 event

The following five themes were brought up the most frequently at the event when discussing the potential of utilising satellite data:

1. Preparing for heat 

A large proportion of the speeches given by researchers at the event focused on the heat island effect and using satellite data to identify, map or resolve the issue. The heat island effect is a phenomenon in which the temperatures measured in urban areas are considerably higher than those in surrounding greener areas. This temperature difference is caused primarily by the buildings, roads and other infrastructure of dense urban areas absorbing more heat than the nearby areas with more natural materials, vegetation or bodies of water. 

The heat island effect is a result of urbanisation that has an impact on energy consumption – in the form of cooling and ventilation needs – and it also reduces air quality. Heat and air pollution are causing extensive public health problems, particularly among the elderly and people with illnesses, with Southern European cities being particularly heavily affected. Therefore, understanding the phenomenon and resolving the issue are crucially important in the creation of more sustainable and resilient cities.

Satellite data may play a key role in resolving the challenges caused by the heat island effect. Satellites equipped with heat sensors can be used to identify heat concentrations, monitor temperature changes and highlight areas affected by the phenomenon the most. This will help city planners develop green areas, parks and water elements correctly to mitigate the heat island effect. Combining satellite-provided temperature data with socio-economic and population data will help identify vulnerable population groups and areas in the greatest danger during heat waves.

Forum Virium Helsinki is promoting climate change adaptation through means such as the Regions4Climate project, which involves examining the heat load of buildings calculated based on satellite data. The socio-economic data of the digital twin indicates which areas in particular could benefit from increased green structures to support heat wave management. The satellite data-based heat map also helps visualise the risk of heat waves and adaptation needs. 

Helsinki, digital twin, (c) Jussi Hellsten www.jussihellsten.com
Helsinki, digital twin, (c) Jussi Hellsten

2. Preparing for floods

Another recurring theme at the ESA event was preparing for increasing floods. Satellite data can be used to monitor rain volumes, soil moisture levels and the extent of (future) floods. High-resolution satellite images can be used to create detailed topographic models of the terrain, which are crucially important to understanding the flow of water and identifying areas prone to stormwater floods. 

Stormwater floods are floods caused by rain or meltwater accumulating on the ground surface in a built area. They occur when torrential rains or the melting of snow causes water to accumulate too quickly for the stormwater drainage system to deal with. This can lead to streets and buildings being flooded.

When rain and soil moisture data is combined with flood models, satellite data-based warning systems can be harnessed to alert the city of stormwater flood risks. In turn, post-flood satellite images can help assess the damage caused to infrastructure, crops and property. The satellite data can identify flood-prone areas and steer city planners towards developing sufficiently robust drainage systems and green infrastructure to reduce the impacts of floods and control their intensity.

Forum Virium Helsinki will focus on this theme in the PCP-WISE project launching in early 2025. The objective of the project will be to develop new tools for water management and climate change adaptation, and to help cities get through water-related crises such as floods and fires.

3. Planning of urban green areas

Satellite data also supports cities’ planning of green areas, such as parks, meadows, forests, bushes and trees. As stated before, increasing urban greenery can prevent stormwater floods and reduce heat in urban areas. 

High-resolution satellite images provide detailed data about the location, type and condition of cities’ green areas, parks and other vegetation. Datasets can be combined to deduce what kind of vegetation thrives in what part of the city with the local soil, exposure to sunlight and availability of water taken into account. Data can also be used to monitor the growth and health of individual trees, making it easier to make decisions on the maintenance of parks and green areas.

In Helsinki, such data can be useful to the City’s units responsible for developing green and public areas, the green area maintenance unit and Helsinki City Construction Services, Stara. Forum Virium’s SPOTTED project involved examining the utilisation of satellite data in green area management. The project yielded a platform utilising satellite data and pilot services, which cities can use for purposes such as producing status reports and examining changes occurring in green areas. Also SPACE4Cities has identified the needs for improved greenery management and is looking for other innovative solutions to support the city.

Markus Annilo, the manager of the City of Tallinn’s digital twin, talked at the ESA’s URBIS24 event about Tallinn’s work on analysing tree diseases and predicting when trees were likely to die by combining satellite data with the city’s digital twin.

Green tram stop with vegetation.
A verdant tram stop, Verkkosaari, Helsinki. Photo: Vesa Laitinen

4. Traffic planning and sustainable mobility

The conference showed that the utilisation of satellite data in traffic planning, mobility management and infrastructure maintenance is still in its infancy. Because of this, the SPACE4Cities project selected sustainable mobility as one of the three challenges in the upcoming tendering process. The other two challenges have to do with digital city planning and preparing for climate change.

In his keynote speech, Director of the Urban Planning, Environment and Health Initiative at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health Mark Nieuwenhuijsen talked about the importance of taking the health impacts of emissions and noise pollution into account in traffic planning. He is currently researching the amount of illnesses in European cities caused by traffic emissions, noise and a lack of green areas. He says that the amount of air pollution and noise, the heat island effect and the lack of green areas and exercise opportunities causing premature deaths are largely a result of city and traffic planning that optimises efficiency. 

Satellite data can be used to improve the planning of urban traffic and increase the prevalence of more sustainable modes of transport, such as cycling and walking. In the planning of public transport, the data can be used to optimise routes and estimate passenger numbers. Sustainable transport can be steered by collecting satellite data on the environmental impacts and emissions of different modes of transport and then taking this data into account in city planning. Satellite data can also be used to chart underutilised urban spaces, such as car parks, that could be utilised for residents’ leisure time activities, such as market events and festivals outside of office hours, for example.

Satellite data can also support the monitoring and maintenance of infrastructure, e.g. through monitoring the condition of bridges, roads and railway and tram tracks, to identify locations in need of repair or maintenance at an early enough stage

Helsinki sauna sea
A winter swimmer in Helsinki. Image: Maija Astikainen

5. Human-centered city planning

There are many ways to create a more pleasant city. Identifying cities’ heat islands and monitoring air quality and green areas, support the planning of an environment that is pleasant to vulnerable population groups as well. 

Keynote speaker Dennis Pamlin from RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden) stated in his interesting and even radical speech that too many of today’s innovations and climate measures are stuck in the 1990s. Because of this, most solutions are based on static operations that only involve optimising existing systems. In his speech, Pamlin proposed systemic changes and a dynamic solution model to steer the next generation of climate measures and innovations. This approach would be centred around people’s needs, while innovation work would focus on increasing health and healthy nutrition, meaningful life and creativity by combining hard data with humanistic information from fields such as brain research.

Satellite data already holds great potential for supporting resident-focused city planning. Charting the division of the population helps place services and infrastructure appropriately, while an accessibility analysis facilitates improving transport alternatives and accessibility.

In many ways, satellite data is a valuable tool in city planning. The free data provided by the European Union should definitely be utilised in the creation of more sustainable, healthy and pleasant cities in Europe.

Photo: Ninni West

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