A novel approach for mapping material stocks of buildings and infrastructure from remote-sensing data

Talk by Dr. Dominik Wiedenhofer: “A novel approach for mapping material stocks of buildings and infrastructure from remote-sensing data”

Spatial patterns of buildings and infrastructures play an important role in determining societies’ resource use patterns and are hence under scrutiny when pondering strategies to foster sustainability. Currently, two types of data are used to map building and infrastructure stocks: (1) night-time lights and (2) cadastral data, which both have important limitations. We here present results of an alternative approach that derives high-resolution material stock maps from a stock-driven modelling using freely available Earth Observation data derived from newest generation European Sentinel satellites, combined with information from OpenStreetMap and material intensity factors per m2 respectively m3 of infrastructures and buildings.

The 14th Biennial International Conference on EcoBalance conference is hosted by the Institute of Life Cycle Assessment, Japan. The theme of the conference is “Materializing Sustainability Visions: Fostering Partnerships with Life Cycle Thinking” and due to COVID-19 restrictions, it happens as a hybrid-online conference. https://www.ecobalanceconference.org/