GEO SB-04 Global Urban Supersites Initiative
Urban Supersites OverView
Background
The SB-04 team has selected eight cities as the supersites: Los Angeles, Atlanta, Mexico City, Athens, Istanbul, San Paolo, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Further, the following benefits of the initiative have been identified, including:
- Identify and exploit synergies of resources in R&D as well as applications and benefits;
- Expand the impact of SB-04 developments by specifically addressing selected cities and interested user communities;
- Facilitate joint studies and publications and broaden the knowledge on global urban remote sensing;
- Enhance interactions among existing the SB-04 contributors and encourage new partners;
- Optimize the presentation of SB-04's product portfolio to potential stakeholders;
- Potential synergies between the urban supersites and the geohazard supersites.
Objectives of the Supersites Initiative
- 1. To provide globally distributed data (EO and derived products) to establish an urban data repository and to
develop standards for the specification and validation;
- 2. To estimate urban extent and associated changes;
- 3. To assess risks associated with natural disasters, air and water qualities, and health hazards caused by vector and animal-borne diseases;
- 4. To derive urban biophysical parameters for characterizing urban land surface-atmosphere interactions
(e.g., temperature, emissivity, albedo, vegetation cover) and for climate change mitigation and adaptation;
- 5. To augment and enhance analysis techniques and methods those illustrate the causes and effects of urbanization at local, regional, and global scales.