Geospatial monitoring of green infrastructure – case study zagreb, croatia

Abstract

This paper presents current research done under the GEMINI (Geospatial monitoring of green infrastructure using terrestrial, airborne and satellite imagery) project. GEMINI is a scientific project of the Faculty of Geodesy, University of Zagreb and Croatian Forest Research Institute funded by the Croatian science foundation. The project aims to explore new knowledge about the green infrastructure (GI) monitoring. The study area of the research is the capital of Croatia, the city of Zagreb. One of the main goals of the project is to explore the possibilities of data integration of all available remote sensing platforms: satellite, aerial and UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) imagery, terrestrial imagery and ground truth data. UAV-based remote sensing offers great possibilities to acquire field data for monitoring of GI within the urban areas in a fast and easy way. The main objective of this research is to establish an innovative, multidimensional system for monitoring of urban green infrastructure. It will integrate the latest means of data collection (multispectral satellite imagery improved and calibrated with high resolution terrestrial and airborne multispectral sources), advanced spatial analysis with the aim to improve decision support system for better management of urban GI. This project will improve the current state of the inventory and monitoring of the urban GI to support decision making and preservation of GI benefits, through the establishment of comprehensive procedures for integration of different sources of imagery at different resolution scales: satellite, terrestrial and airborne. This research will focus on novel methods for GI monitoring on the integration of different multispectral imagery sensors. It will require a highly multidisciplinary approach, leading to improvements in methods and procedures for automatic and semi-automatic processing of a large number of geospatial imagery data in the field of urban forest management with expected impact in forestry, arboriculture, urban and geospatial science.