Image Analysis in Infrastructure Planning

There is an increasing pressure on organizations and environmental agencies to assess the environmental impact of regional policies and activities. In Germany alone, every day some 100 hectares of land – the equivalent of 200 football pitches – is lost to urban development and transport infrastructure. With 75 per cent of Europeans living in urban areas, it is a similar story across the continent. In developing countries around the world, increasing urbanization leads to severe health and safety challenges from uncontrolled land consumption and growing slums. Strategies for soil protection and monitoring systems are urgently needed all over the world.

Organizations need standardized, high-quality spatial information across all environments to be able to compare different regions and cities. The results must be ready for direct integration into any GIS environment and contain well-defined levels of confidence in order to provide a reliable basis for decisions. Initiatives such as the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) were established to address these issues by building a space- and ground-based infrastructure to provide reliable and timely Earth Observation information services.

Accurate rapid mapping and change detection are essential tools in the sustainable planning of urban infrastructure and traffic corridors. Definiens’ technology helps to reduce construction, operation and maintenance costs for new oil and gas pipelines and telecoms infrastructure. It supports long term urban planning, ensuring that land is used appropriately and that quality of life is enhanced.

Reference projects and case studies in infrastructure planning