Urban Remote Sensing: State-of-the-Art Reviews and Future Perspectives
A special issue of Remote Sensing (ISSN 2072-4292). This special issue belongs to the section "Urban Remote Sensing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 February 2026 | Viewed by 17
Special Issue Editor
Interests: urban environmental studies; urban public health; GIS/remote Sensing; spatiotemporal data analysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Over half the global population lives in urban areas, making remote sensing indispensable in understanding and managing cities. Urban remote sensing supports critical applications—from land use/land cover mapping and urban heat island monitoring to air quality detection and disaster response—via providing data-driven insights at multiple scales. Recent advances in technology have unlocked unprecedented capabilities; high-resolution satellite, aerial, and UAV imagery, multi-sensor integration (optical, SAR, LiDAR), emerging social sensing, and AI-driven analytics now enable the near real-time observation of urban environments. These developments offer holistic views of urban systems yet also reveal new challenges in data processing, accuracy, ethical consideration, and scalability. In this context, “Urban Remote Sensing: State-of-the-Art Reviews and Future Perspectives” aims to gather high-quality review articles that synthesize the latest advancements in this discipline and outline key research gaps and future directions. As a Review Special Issue, our goal is to provide a broad and rigorous overview of the field, covering major trends, emerging challenges, and opportunities for future research. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Urban land use/land cover classification;
- Urban heat island mapping and monitoring;
- Remote sensing for urban climate, air quality, and health;
- Three-dimensional city modeling and urban morphology;
- Multi-sensor data fusion (e.g., optical, SAR, LiDAR, social sensing);
- Applications of machine learning and AI in urban remote sensing;
- Remote sensing in urban resilience, sustainability, and smart city development;
- High-resolution satellite, aerial, and UAV data in urban analysis;
- Time series analysis and urban change detection.
We invite prospective authors to contribute their insights and help shape the future of urban remote sensing through this Special Issue.
Prof. Dr. Danlin Yu
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Remote Sensing is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- urban remote sensing
- land use and land cover
- urban heat island
- multi-sensor fusion
- artificial intelligence
- urban resilience
- smart cities with remote observation
- 3D city modeling
- urban environmental health monitoring with multi-sensors
- change detection
- urban sustainability
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