URBAN PLANNING GOES MULTISPECTRAL

MASSIMO ZOTTI OF PLANETEK ITALIA OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF AN ADDED-VALUE SOLUTION FOR URBAN PLANNING AT REGIONAL AND PROVINCIAL LEVEL USING WORLDVIEW-2 IMAGERY
When devising urban plans, project managers and municipal ocers need a comprehensive framework of knowledge of the territory in question at the earliest stage. This framework needs to be updated to remain current and must also be comprehensive; objective, and standardised with all other entities engaged in the planning process. Local planning guidelines issued in Italy by several public administration recommend the use of remotely-sensed data and regard it as an important resource for objective, standardised and constantly updated information. In this context Planetek Italia s.r.l. developed an o-the-shelf added value product - Preciso Land - that integrates Very High Resolution (VHR) WorldView-2 Earth Observation imagery with traditional cartographic data. The challenge was to design a mapping product that employs standardised procedures to derive objective environmental indicators for the decisionmaking process. The result is a multi-level product of very high geometric detail that, at the same time, enjoys high spatial congruence with existing cartographic data. The methodology employs a semiautomated approach to extract a rst delineation of main land use classes and implement a soil-sealing layer from Worldview-2 multispectral band imagery. The result is a homogeneous distribution of information at 2m resolution over the target area. It is important to emphasise that all eight multispectral bands contribute to the automatic identication of soil-sealing, thanks to the unmatched information content provided by WorldView-2. The result (pictured) is used not only as an input during classication of urban density classes, but also as the most promising source for deriving an important indicator: the Soil Loss Index. The latter is currently used by decision-makers to understand and evaluate the environmental impact of proposed programmes in relation to sustainable development. The semi-automatic extraction of the soil-sealing layer from a WorldView-2 multispectral dataset allows a faster calculation of the Soil Loss Index when comparing WV-2 time series. Moreover the use of automated procedures for processing of WorldView-2 high resolution multispectral datasets dramatically reduces production time and provides high levels of information accuracy and objectivity. Thanks to this development, project managers and municipal planners can now count on geoinformation products, based on EO data, that deliver a comprehensive, up-to-date territorial overview of high quality. Furthermore, those products may be regularly updated and, due to their high level of standardisation, allow an analysis of historical trends that are the basis for dening geospatial indicators.
COMPANY PROFILE

Planetek Italia S.r.l. is a leading multidisciplinary Geographical Information Services and Earth Observation company that is exploits the value of geodata through viable, desirable and feasible solutions for storage, processing and delivery. Founded in 1994, Planetek has steadily expanded in the Italian GIS market place by incorporating the latest techniques, many of which have been developed by its dedicated team of high-level R&D professionals. Contact: Massimo Zotti, Sales Manager (zotti@planetek.it) Address: Planetek Italia .s.rl., Via Massaua, 12 I-70123 Bari, Italy Phone: +39 080 9644200 http://www.planetek.it http://www.massimozotti.it

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