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European Space Agency

Press Release

WWF-Italia tags urban 'hot spots' with ESA's UrbEx

12 May 2003
 
WWF Italia is monitoring the urbanization of the Italian coast to
catch overdeveloped 'hot spots,' courtesy of an ESA programme to
develop new applications-driven services with space data. 
 
WWF Italia has been working with ESA as part of the Agency's Urban
Expansion (UrbEx) project to provide a novel information service that
monitors the loss of natural areas from urban development. The
project's objective was to demonstrate the capability to monitor
urban growth using Earth observation information. In addition, the
goal included the development of an imagery database and analytical
tools to assess the growth of urbanization and its impact on natural
resources.

Under the ESA sponsorship, the Italian technology company, Advanced
Computer Systems (ACS), developed the sophisticated mapping service
for WWF-Italia that allows the environmental watchdog organisation to
identify areas that may have been over-developed or subject to other
types of environmental stress - the so-called 'hot spots'.

Once the service identified a potential trouble WWF then can verify
the exact nature of the problem and, as needed, launch a campaign, an
official with the environmental agency said.

"We are interested in monitoring coastal areas and looking for such
things as illegal construction, new roads, expansion of ports and
tourist facilities, degradation of natural vegetation regions like
wetlands and dunes, and water pollution from civil and industrial
sewage," explained Andrea Masullo, energy, climate and waste officer
for WWF-Italia. "We want to identify hot spots and investigate before
it's too late to do anything about the environmental impact."

The Web-based service permits WWF-Italia access to maps that provide
different types of land-use analyses and cover different geographical
areas, depending on the specific issues of concern. Designed by ESA
and ACS after an in-depth process of evaluation and assessment of the
user's requirements, the service covers an area of 200 000 sq km, or
about two-third's of Italy's total land area.

The prime application is to identify potential at-risk coastline
areas for additional WWF attention. Changes in land use are
highlighted on maps derived from analyses of satellite imagery from
ESA and other satellites acquired in 1994-95, and comparing those
with images acquired more recently.
 
ACS is currently preparing a market analysis and targeting other
potential users for the UrbEx service, according to Ferdinando
Iavarone, ACS' UrbEx project manager.

"ACS is working on the possibility to offer the service
commercially," Iavarone said.

The ACS official said that other potential users for an UrbEx-type
service include:

    * organisations similar to WWF interested in the preservation of
      natural landscapes
    * governmental bodies at local, national and European levels 
    * statistical agencies handling agricultural/urban census data 
    * mobile communications companies for antenna locations and
      bandwidth studies
    * commercial mapping companies. 

The UrBex project is part of ESA's Data User Programme aimed at
finding innovative, operational applications of Earth observation
data to solve environmental and other problems.

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