Frontiers in Optical Remote Sensing of Urban Areas: Processing Techniques and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Active and passive earth observation data (EO) including synthetic aperture RADAR (SAR), LiDAR and optical remote sensing (ORS) play an important role in mapping, monitoring and forecasting information about urban areas and their change. Driven by advances in technologies, ORS is now capable of acquiring and processing very-high-resolution (VHR) imagery through airborne or spaceborne platforms. Consequently, ORS in urban environments has been rapidly emerging as a new frontier technology for mapping and monitoring urban land cover as well as understanding the biophysical properties, patterns, and processes of urban landscapes. There is now a need to broaden awareness and understanding of the novel techniques and innovative applications of ORS in the context of urban areas to realize the full potential of the technology in urban planning and management and addressing the societal needs.

This Special Issue seeks high-quality, innovative research papers featuring novel research and representing critical advances in the techniques, algorithms, methodologies, and applications related to data processing, information extraction, and modelling urban environments. The scope of this issue is limited to the use of ORS data (visible, multispectral, or thermal) of high spatial resolution acquired from aerial or spaceborne platforms over urban areas. The contributions to this issue may focus on, but are not limited to:

• Urban remote sensing based on space- and airborne and UAV platforms
• Image processing techniques, multi-data source fusion, segmentation, and object-based data processing
• Novel techniques for deep learning and machine learning for information extraction
• The detection and extraction of urban features (buildings, roads, vegetation, etc.)
• Urban mapping, 3D modelling, analysis, and assessment of urban composition and structure
• Change detection and analysis of urban dynamics and sprawl
• Modelling urban growth, and impact of urban growth and urban transportation on other land uses
• Assessing the performance of ORS-based methods against those of LiDAR and/or SAR

Dr. Alaeldin Suliman
Dr. Raid Al-Tahir
Dr. Bahram Salehi
Guest Editors

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