Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Earth Observation (EO) data to fill data gaps in rapidly transforming cities

To achieve a sustainable urbanisation, urban planning and land management, need updated and geographically detailed data, which remain a challenge to find because of :

• The cost of generating such data through traditional methods intensive in field work,

• The shortage of skilled professionals in geospatial sciences, low national capacity of geospatial data production,

• The inertia regarding the change of routine workflows and adopting new practices that are not imposed through legal requirements.

Earth Observation (EO) capabilities can provide useful information for decision making for sustainable urbanisation.  Indeed, it can address the 2 first points :

• EO data are cheaper than field measures/observation to produce similar data,

• Training such as with IdeaMapSudan can contribute to skilled professionals.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows the processing of big data sets, such as EO data on urban areas with very high spatial resolution to map small houses.

The presentation concerns results from some ANAGEO (ULB) research projects (since 2014) using EO and AI using mainly Open Data and Software.