Drones and Satellites for Urban Development

Background

To make urban spaces more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable, we need to leverage high-quality, timely, and reliable disaggregated data to inform the creation and management of inclusive urban development plans. These plans should include improvements to enable access to basic services (water, electricity, etc.) and public transportation, allow access to open spaces for public use by all, and incorporate slum improvement policies, among other elements.

Medium- (1 km-500m) to high-resolution (30m -10m) satellite imagery, coupled with methodological and computational advances, can be used to define and map urban areas and settlements in spatiotemporal dimensions, characterize their morphology, extract population estimates through statistical modeling techniques, and help authorities better plan and manage urban growth and spatial distribution. In addition, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly known as drones, can capture images at very high spatial and temporal resolutions, and provide supplemental geospatial information that can support urban upgrading projects, when combined with local knowledge and advanced processing.

The United Nations (UN) developed its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development to provide a blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). That agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) directly pertains to this challenge. Relevant SDG 11 Targets include the following:

• Target 11.1: By 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services and upgrade slums.
• Target 11.2: By 2030, provide access to safe, affordable, accessible and sustainable transport systems for all, improving road safety, notably by expanding public transport, with special attention to the needs of those in vulnerable situations, women, children, persons with disabilities and older persons.
• Target 11.3: By 2030, enhance inclusive and sustainable urbanization and capacity for participatory, integrated and sustainable human settlement planning and management in all countries.
• Target 11.6: By 2030, reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities, including by paying special attention to air quality and municipal and other waste management.
• Target 11.7: By 2030, provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, in particular for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities.

Objectives

Your challenge is to demonstrate how spaceborne, airborne, and ground-based remote sensing data can be combined with data collected by UAVs to improve the timeliness and quality of urban-related indicators, support sustainable urban development, and enable tangible improvements to the quality of people’s lives in cities and local communities.

More specifically, your challenge is to use multiple data streams – including spaceborne remote sensing and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) sensing data – to inform UN SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) and address the relevant SDG 11 Targets for a city (or cities) of interest. Your overarching goal is to enable local stakeholders (urban planners, city authorities) to develop more sustainable, disaster-risk resilient and inclusive urban plans.

Potential Considerations

The following are example outputs that your project could (but is not required to) include:

• a city-specific tool (or app) for computing an indicator
• a digital story-telling product (e.g., story map, web portal)
• a short video tutorial sharing your step-by-step method or providing a demonstration of your city-specific app or tool

For data and resources related to this challenge, refer to the Resources tab at the top of the page. More resources may be added before the hackathon begins.

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