Requirement on Mapping High-Resolution Urban Impervious Surfaces: History
View Latest Version
Please note this is an old version of this entry, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Subjects: Remote Sensing
Contributor:
Zhenfeng Shao
,
Tao Cheng
,
Huyan Fu
,
Deren Li
,
Xiao Huang

Urban impervious surface (UIS) refers to a land surface paved with impervious or low permeability materials within the urban development boundary. UIS generally consists of materials such as tile, impervious asphalt, and impervious concrete. It typically includes buildings, structures, impervious roads, plazas, parking lots, etc. UIS is a key parameter in climate change, environmental change, and sustainability. High-resolution impervious surface mapping is a long-term need. There is an urgent requirement for impervious surface mapping from high-resolution remote sensing imagery. High-resolution images can capture details and spatial relationships among different objects, gradually becoming an important data source for fine-grained urban impervious surface extraction.

  • urban impervious surface
  • high-resolution
  • remote sensing images

1. Introduction

Urbanization contributes to changes in urban spatial structures and land surface properties [1]. These changes are primarily a process of conversion from natural land surfaces to urban impervious surfaces (UISs). UIS, a key environmental indicator in climate change, environmental change, and sustainability studies, has become a current research hot topic. UIS refers to a land surface paved with impervious or low permeability materials within the urban development boundary. UIS generally consists of materials such as tile, impervious asphalt, and impervious concrete. It typically includes buildings, structures, impervious roads, plazas, parking lots, etc. [2][3]. In the past few decades, many people have poured into cities [4], accelerating the urbanization process and leading to the rapid expansion of UIS. The high density of UIS has caused many urban problems, e.g., urban heat islands [5], urban waterlogging [6], soil erosion [7], and air pollution [8]. Therefore, the mapping UIS can be used to monitor urban expansion, population change, and environmental change [8][9].
Due to the free and open data policy, advanced cloud computing platforms (e.g., Google Earth Engine (GEE), Pixel Information Expert Engine (PIE-Engine)) provide powerful computational capabilities and large amounts of online data for global-scale and regional-scale impervious surface studies. As a result, the number of publications on impervious surfaces has increased in recent years. With the improvement of the basic theoretical framework and the deepening of scientific research, low- and medium-resolution impervious surfaces can no longer meet the scientific problems at fine scales. It is urgent to extract high-resolution impervious surfaces quickly and accurately to explore and study key scientific questions at fine scales.
Although high-resolution optical remote sensing imagery and low- and medium-resolution optical remote sensing imagery have similar spectral characteristics, the differences in geometric and textural characteristics are enormous. As the spatial resolution increases, the data volume of high-resolution remote sensing imagery increases geometrically, requiring more parallel computing capabilities for impervious surface mapping. At the same time, the spectral differences between the same objects increases the difficulty of fine-grained impervious surface extraction.

2. Urban Surface Energy Balance

In the context of rapid urbanization, a higher proportion of impervious surfaces alters the heat capacity, albedo, and local climate conditions, affecting surface energy absorption, storage, and emittance [10][11][12]. Thus, the rapid growth of impervious surfaces changes the mode of surface energy exchange [13]. Due to high heat capacity and heat conductivity, urban land surfaces tend to absorb a large amount of solar radiation energy, leading to an increase in urban surface temperature, an acceleration of the hydrological cycle, and more extreme rainstorm events.
The change in the spatial structure of impervious surfaces is likely to impact surface heat distribution and aggravate thermal environment issues. In order to study the impact of urban change on the urban thermal environment, we can take impervious surfaces as the representation of urban change, build a theoretical framework between impervious surfaces and the urban thermal environment, and put forward reasonable suggestions to mitigate the urban heat problem.
Urbanization has a significant impact on the urban hydrological cycle mechanism. Impervious surface, as the most prominent feature of urbanization, leads to a massive and comprehensive change in the hydrological system across different spatial scales [14][15]. Due to the impermeability, an increase in impervious surfaces is likely to lessen evapotranspiration and infiltration, leading to increased stormwater runoff. With the decrease in infiltration, there is a direct reduction in vertical infiltration recharge to groundwater, leading to a decrease in groundwater levels. We argue that accurate, high-resolution mapping of impervious surfaces is conducive to the analysis of the urban hydrological cycle mechanism.

3. Sustainable Urban Development

At current population growth rates, 60% of the world’s population will live in cities by 2030 and 68% will do so by 2050 [4] As the population migrates to cities, the amount of impervious surfaces (e.g., urban built-up lands) increases dramatically. We acknowledge the contradictions among the population, built-up lands, and ecology posing challenges to the sustainable development of cities. Therefore, better management of urban expansion and population growth paves the way for urban sustainability.
Among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations in 2015 [16], the SDG11.3.1 indicator, which refers to the Ratio of Land Consumption Rate to Population Growth Rate (LCRPGR), can be used to quantify the coordination between urban land expansion and population growth. Studies have indicated that the impervious surfaces extracted from remote sensing images can accurately represent urban surface information [17][18]. High-resolution impervious surfaces can better present the urban internal structure and accurately map the spatial differences of urban sustainable development [19]. Therefore, it is urgent to obtain large-scale and high-resolution urban impervious surfaces spatial distribution information to monitor sustainable urban development.

4. Old City Reconstruction and New Urban Construction

Rebuilding the underground pipeline network for drainage is difficult and can lead to traffic congestion and extra excavation costs. Thus, it has caused a major demand to increase the permeability of surface features, such as turning impervious surfaces into permeable surfaces. The old city reconstruction and the new urban construction are expected to have an important influence on urban development. However, a series of challenges (e.g., urban waterlogging) are likely to be introduced.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in investigating inland inundation using different models. Ecological models are currently being used to analyze urban waterlogging problems. The underlying principle of these models is that the amount of rain exceeds the discharge capacity of the urban drainage system due to the high percentage of impervious surface. Therefore, accurate information about urban impervious surfaces can lead to new solutions for urban waterlogging.
The extraction of urban impervious surfaces from remote sensing technology is beneficial for the old city reconstruction and new urban formulation, allowing us to create a “breathing” city, with the permeability of urban areas through the cavernous transformation of the old urban area. As for the formulation of the new urban areas, the permeability should also be considered, as the amount and distribution of impervious urban areas closely correlate with land use.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/rs15102562

References

  1. Zhu, Z.; Qiu, S.; Ye, S. Remote Sensing of Land Change: A Multifaceted Perspective. Remote Sens. Environ. 2022, 282, 113266.
  2. Arnold, C.L.; Gibbons, C.J. Impervious Surface Coverage: The Emergence of a Key Environmental Indicator. J. Am. Plan. Assoc. 1996, 62, 243–258.
  3. Cai, B.; Shao, Z.; Fang, S.; Huang, X.; Tang, Y.; Zheng, M.; Zhang, H. The Evolution of Urban Agglomerations in China and How It Deviates from Zipf’s Law. Geo-Spat. Inf. Sci. 2022, 1–11.
  4. UN DESA. World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision. 2018; Volume 12. Available online: https://www.un-ilibrary.org/content/books/9789210043144 (accessed on 11 May 2023).
  5. Morabito, M.; Crisci, A.; Guerri, G.; Messeri, A.; Congedo, L.; Munafò, M. Surface Urban Heat Islands in Italian Metropolitan Cities: Tree Cover and Impervious Surface Influences. Sci. Total Environ. 2021, 751, 142334.
  6. Xiao, S.; Zou, L.; Xia, J.; Dong, Y.; Yang, Z.; Yao, T. Assessment of the Urban Waterlogging Resilience and Identification of Its Driving Factors: A Case Study of Wuhan City, China. Sci. Total Environ. 2023, 866, 161321.
  7. Yu, W.; Zhao, L.; Fang, Q.; Hou, R. Contributions of Runoff from Paved Farm Roads to Soil Erosion in Karst Uplands under Simulated Rainfall Conditions. Catena 2021, 196, 104887.
  8. Hou, Y.; Ding, W.; Liu, C.; Li, K.; Cui, H.; Liu, B.; Chen, W. Influences of Impervious Surfaces on Ecological Risks and Controlling Strategies in Rapidly Urbanizing Regions. Sci. Total Environ. 2022, 825, 153823.
  9. Sun, Z.; Du, W.; Jiang, H.; Weng, Q.; Guo, H.; Han, Y.; Xing, Q.; Ma, Y. Global 10-m Impervious Surface Area Mapping: A Big Earth Data Based Extraction and Updating Approach. Int. J. Appl. Earth Obs. Geoinf. 2022, 109, 102800.
  10. Firozjaei, M.K.; Weng, Q.; Zhao, C.; Kiavarz, M.; Lu, L.; Alavipanah, S.K. Surface Anthropogenic Heat Islands in Six Megacities: An Assessment Based on a Triple-Source Surface Energy Balance Model. Remote Sens. Environ. 2020, 242, 111751.
  11. Li, H.; Zhou, Y.; Wang, X.; Zhou, X.; Zhang Huiwen and Sodoudi, S. Quantifying Urban Heat Island Intensity and Its Physical Mechanism Using/UCM. Sci. Total Environ. 2019, 650, 3110–3119.
  12. Firozjaei, M.K.; Fathololoumi, S.; Mijani Naeim and Kiavarz, M.; Qureshi, S.; Homaee, M.; Alavipanah, S.K. Evaluating the Spectral Indices Efficiency to Quantify Daytime Surface Heat Island Intensity: An Intercontinental Methodology. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 2854.
  13. Meng, C.; Huang, C.; Dou, J.; Li, H.; Cheng, C. Key Parameters in Urban Surface Radiation Budget and Energy Balance Modeling. Urban Clim. 2021, 39, 100940.
  14. Shao, Z.; Fu, H.; Li, D.; Altan, O.; Cheng, T. Remote Sensing Monitoring of Multi-Scale Watersheds Impermeability for Urban Hydrological Evaluation. Remote Sens. Environ. 2019, 232, 111338.
  15. Meng, X. Understanding the Effects of Site-Scale Water-Sensitive Urban Design (WSUD) in the Urban Water Cycle: A Review. Blue-Green Syst. 2022, 4, 45–57.
  16. United Nations. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development; United Nations: San Francisco, CA, USA, 2015.
  17. Zhang, H.; Lin, H.; Wang, Y. A New Scheme for Urban Impervious Surface Classification from SAR Images. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 2018, 139, 103–118.
  18. Liu, C.; Zhang, Q.; Luo, H.; Qi, S.; Tao, S.; Xu, H.; Yao, Y. An Efficient Approach to Capture Continuous Impervious Surface Dynamics Using Spatial-Temporal Rules and Dense Landsat Time Series Stacks. Remote Sens. Environ. 2019, 229, 114–132.
  19. Zhang, T.; Huang, X. Monitoring of Urban Impervious Surfaces Using Time Series of High-Resolution Remote Sensing Images in Rapidly Urbanized Areas: A Case Study of Shenzhen. IEEE J. Sel. Top Appl. Earth Obs. Remote Sens. 2018, 11, 2692–2708.
More
© Text is available under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.
This entry is offline, you can click here to edit this entry!
Video Production Service
Feedback