Megapoli – Urban Morphology Database for Atmospheric Modeling
Majority of mankind nowadays lives in cities which generate a great proportion of wealth and economic power. However, transportation of pollution and other micro level particles as well as weather affect and hinder human actions. Small scale climate and air transportation modeling helps to understand and mitigate these problems, however, detailed models of urban morphology is needed for accurate model.
Our research group created such a morphological model of Paris by using remote sensing techniques to assist local climate and air quality modeling. The work was done in the framework of the international “Megapoli” project. The approach uses various data sources including optical, infrared and interferometric SAR images. Material used for this database was derived from various existing sources and databases. For example, topography of a test city was received from NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission database, interferometric ASAR images were retrieved from ESA archives and optical images were gathered from Google Earth. Also other existing topographic, cartographic and elevation information was used.
The database includes a city road map, classification of important land use classes, an elevation model of the ground and a rough elevation model of the buildings, cityscape roughness, energy heat balance parameters and other parameters.
Figure 1. Created morphological database of Paris. Red—buildings, Blue—water, Light Green—parks, Black—streets, Dark Green—trees, White—no classification.
Recent publications:
- Sievinen, P., Praks, J., Hallikainen, M., Koskinen, J., Hellsten, A., Kukkonen, J., "Urban morphology retrieval by means of remote sensing for the modelling of atmospheric dispersion and micro-meteorology," Proc. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2009 (IGARSS 2009), vol.3, pp.III-877-III-880, 12-17 July 2009. URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=5417909&isnumber=5417750
- Tack, A., Koskinen, J., Hellsten, A., Sievinen, P., Esau, I., Praks, J., Kukkonen, J., Hallikainen, M., , "Morphological Database of Paris for Atmospheric Modeling Purposes," IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing, accepted for publication, 2012. URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6232472&isnumber=4609444
- Tack, A., Praks, J., Sievinen, P., Hellsten, A. , "SAR interferometry for atmospheric modeling and risk assessment in urban environment," 9th European Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar 2012 (EUSAR’12), pp.58-61, 23-26 April 2012