The World Settlement Footprint provides five products that monitor the changing dynamics of urban areas. Such products help policy makers to take informed decisions to make cities more sustainable and resilient to future changes. The WSF combines satellite Earth observation with machine learning and information and telecommunication technologies to provide assessments and predictions, and even to enable participatory platforms to collect and share information on urban settlements.

The 7^th episode of the Eurisy Members’ Corner series was conducted by Dr Thomas Esch, Senior Scientist and leader of the “Smart Cities and Spatial Development” team at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

83% of cities are highly vulnerable to disaster-related mortality and the number of people living in urban areas is constantly increasing. Sustainable and resilient management of our cities is of key importance for our future. The World Settlement Footprint Initiative developed by DLR wants to exploit Earth observation to provide up-to-date and area-wide insights into the status and the dynamics of the built environment.

Sentinel-1 radar and Sentinel-2 multispectral images, open and free, are the core of the WSF information system, that has the ambition of providing free services.

In addition to the information provided daily by satellites, the platform includes data generated by social media and volunteered geographic information, like OpenStreetMap.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence allow scientists at DLR to organise the data collected and to turn it into actionable information for policy makers, scientists and the industry.

The World Settlement Footprint initiative includes five products, or data layers.

The WSF is the first they created in 2015 and updated in 2019, a binary settlement map of the globe indicating where settlements are and how they interrelate with each other. The product is based on Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 satellite images. It provides very precise information on the settlements’ extent on the entire Earth.

WSF visualisation of settlements in the Bavarian area of Germany based on a Sentinel-2 image and processed by an algorithm.

The second product considers the amount of impervious surface to locate the settlements. Created in 2019, it is based on WSF and Sentinel-2 images and it provides an insight into the density of built areas within cities.

WSF Imperviousness in Laos. Here, different satellite images collected over a period of time have been analysed with the support of machine learning to mask the clouds on the final image. The product shows indexes, like the built-up areas (in red), the vegetation index (in green) and the water index (in blue).

The third product developed by DLR, WSF Population, uses satellite data and statistical data on population to provide information on the distribution of people in a certain area. These products have been used on several occasions by entities such as the World Bank, that asked them to estimate the number of people exposed to natural hazards on the whole African continent.

WSF Population showing the distribution of population in Cape Town. White areas are industrial complexes where no population is estimated.

WSF Evolution shows changes of the built-up area and trends over time. Developed in collaboration with Google, the product shows where settlements are growing and how fast.

WSF evolution allows to distinguish planned urban development from more spontaneous urban growth globally. It also allows to measure indicator 11.3.1 “Ratio of land consumption rate to population growth rate” of the Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.  Indeed, a city is supposed to be more sustainable if the settlements’ growth is higher than the population’s growth.

By combining the data on settlements’ growth coming from WSF evolution with population data provided by the UN, the experts of DLR were able to find out that in cities in low-income countries, settlements grow faster than the population, while in cities in high-income countries, buildings tend to appear at a slower pace than new inhabitants.

Evolution of settlements’ extent in Cairo from 1985 to 2015 based on Landsat satellite images from that period. The colours — from red (before 1985) to violet (2015) — indicate the years in which the buildings appeared.

The products of the World Settlement Footprint are continuously evolving. Currently, building up on the WSF Evolution, WSF Imperviousness is being fed with Landsat images from 1985 that allow for the assessment of the evolution of the impervious surface over time, while also indicating population density.

In the future, Dr Esch’s team wishes to integrate such analyses with population data, as they did for the International Red Cross in the Gaza Strip, where they mapped the distribution of the population from 2015 to 2020.

Evolution of impervious surface over population density in Gaza between 1995 and 2015.

Most population modelling activities are still made in 2D. The last product of the WSF initiative, WSF 3D, also includes information on the height of the buildings in the settlements mapped, which allows to estimate population density much more precisely.

The algorithm of the WSF 3D product estimates the location of the centres of cities based on buildings’ volume.

In the main graph: the height of buildings in Paris. Even though it is still not possible to calculate the height of each building, the algorithm of WSF 3D allowed scientists at DLR to find out that cities in high-income countries tend to concentrate high buildings in the city centre, while these are more equally distributed in the neighbourhoods of cities of low-income countries.

These data have a great potential to support decision making, especially when integrated within thematic applications. Among current activities, DLR is running the Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform project, funded by the European Space Agency. On the platform users can generate information on demand by selecting their area and time of interest. The platform also provides other data, like population data, that can be combined to produce statistics.

The World Settlement Footprint intiative’s products are largerly used for evidence-based policy advice and decision support (e.g., by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank) and for knowledge and technology transfer (more than a thousand institutions use the WSF products).

Nevertheless, also local authorities can use such data if they have a geographic information system (GIS). In addition, the WSF can also provide data in the form of statistics or Excel tables that can be used also by municipalise without a GIS. At the moment, the DLR team is also working on technologies to transfer information machine-to-machine for users who can’t store large datasets.

To know more about the activities of DLR visit: https://www.dlr.de/EN/Home/home_node.html

The presentation of the webinar is available here: 20221104_EurisyMembersCorner_DLR-TEsch (2)

The recordings can be accessed here: https://youtu.be/R08Rq6DUAVI

Stay tuned for the next webinar of the Eurisy Members’ Corner that will be hosted by the Netherlands Space Office (NSO) on the 16th of December 2022 between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM CET.

In recent years, the relevance of STEM subjects has become more prominent, mostly due to the impact these subjects have on the labor-market. Nevertheless, in Secondary Schools, STEM subjects are not always part of the educational curricula. The lack diversity in the offer may decrease pupils’ motivation in further pursue a STEM academic paths, which are often perceived as too hard, and the pupils do not feel skilled enough to pursue a career in this sector. [2]

In addition to this, another relevant aspect characterizing STEM subjects are the existence of a gender gap. Even if nowadays an increased number of girls have access to education than ever before, they often still do not have the same opportunities to choose, complete and benefit from a carrier in STEM. Girls and women are under-represented in STEM education and careers. According to the UNESCO report “Cracking the code: Girls’ and women’s education in STEM”, only 35% of STEM students are women. This percentage is quite alarming, considering that the future job market will be oriented towards more STEM careers. [3]

Based on the relatively low appealing of STEM curricula among students, some schools have begun to offer an evolved concept: the STEAM. STEAM-based curricula are not just focused on scientific concepts, but characterised by a learning approach using Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Arts to stimulate students’ critical thinking, dialogue exchange and understanding.

Currently both STEM and STEAM education represents a strategic priority for the European Union in the field of education and training.

According to the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report 2018, more than 1 in 5 pupils in the European Union has insufficient proficiency in reading mathematics or science.[4] STEAM learning modules, especially in secondary schools proved their ability to nurture the curiosity and cognitive resources of students, providing them with the right tools to understand the complexity of the world and face the challenges that the current times are posing, like climate change, among many others. Future generations represent a juncture between the growing understanding of the potential hazardous impact of climate change on society and local communities and the need to address those challenges with concrete actions on a daily basis. STEAM education is thus key to equip students with the necessary tools to act to favor a sustainable transition towards a greener and more resilient environments. Preparing these future generation means also endow them with a new set of skills to train future professionals to access a more and more competitive job market in which technology and science play an increasingly significant role.

The project

The improvement of STEAM education in secondary schools is the core objective of the Erasmus+ funded project “GIS4Schools”, which started in September 2020 and ends in June 2023, but poised to unfold its effects for a way longer time.

GIS4Schools relies on the support of a transnational and multi-stakeholders’ partnership composed by:

• Four secondary schools ITT Marconi (Italy), Escola Secundária José Afonso (Portugal), Colegiul National Ion Neculce Bucuresti (Romania), and IES Marc Ferrer (Spain);
• One technical university: the Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI) (Italy)
• One training teaching centre: Eagle Intuition (Portugal)
• Four European and National Associations active in the field of Education, Space, Resilience and Climate Change: Eurisy (France), Euronike (Italy), Urban 2020 Association (Romania) and Blue Bubble World (Spain).

In total, 24 teachers and 180 pupils will be involved in the project, while 200 teachers and 1000 pupils will be indirect beneficiaries of the project’s outputs.

GIS4Schools aims at promoting a new innovative approach to foster the teaching of STEAM subjects in secondary schools. This objective will be achieved by allowing pupils to learn about GIS technology and how to use it to respond to climate change challenges. For the first time, high schools’ pupils will have the opportunity to use satellite data at school. The data will be provided by the European Earth Observation Programme Copernicus, and it will be used to help the pupils in the co-creation process of GIS-based products.

The Intellectual Outputs

The methodology that will be adopted by the teachers is the result of a combination of Inquiry-Based Science Education (IBSE), and Problem-Based Learning Approach (PBL) adapted to the teaching of science subjects.

During the project, three main tools will support the efforts of the teachers and will guide the pupils to the final goal of selecting one specific challenge climate change is posing to their community and provide through GIS powered tools an idea for concrete action to be undertaken to minimise the effects. The case studies will be included in a final report to be developed by each selected students’ class.

The training packages have a critical importance for both teachers and pupils: teachers will learn which methodology and pedagogic approach have to be adopted to transfer the new knowledge and to transfer it. While, pupils will acquire new competencies such as data visualization, GIS and Analysis tools, EO and Imagery Analysis, and Geospatial Data Management related to climate change and related hazards using Copernicus data. The training package will be built and designed by the POLIMI based on their extensive experience and expertise in transferring knowledge on the use of GIS-based software. It will include guidelines, exercises and simulations and it will be illustrated during an intensive four days professional training course.

A suite of open source GIS products co-created with pupils’ involvement on the topic of climate change. The methodology that will be adopted is a learning-by-doing approach. The process of co-creation of a final GIS-based product will increase the student’s knowledge of all the technicalities behind each development phase whilst deepening their understanding of climate change.

E-Learning platform and Open Source Repository. Having the opportunity of collecting, storing and sharing the knowledge of the pupils has a double dimension. On one side, an e-learning platform and open-source repository would facilitate the interactions among the schools participating in the project, especially today where distance learning represents a valid option to protect the pupils from COVID-19 risks. On the other side, the repository and the e-learning platform represent an incredible source of information for those pupils and teachers, not participating in the project but interested in implementing STEAM curricula in their schools in the future.

Impact

The main expected impacts of the GIS4Schools project are centred on boosting STEAM’s knowledge in Secondary Schools while increasing teachers’ and students’ familiarity and acquisition of new skills in STEAM disciplines teaching, both in terms of content and of methodologies. Furthermore, the project aims at impacting on:

• Pupil’s environmental awareness while working on local case studies;
• Pupils’ civil engagement and responsible citizenship by developing a sample solution to respond to local challenges;
• Innovative pedagogical modules on GIS and climate change not yet covered by the traditional educational curricula.

GIS4Schools aims at providing the pupils with all the tools they need to observe and change the world around them.

Eurisy in the GIS4Schools project

Eurisy participates in the GIS4Schools project as leader of communication and dissemination work package. Communications activities are key to engage the students proving them with the motivations to feel the ownership of the projects and the results achieved; to ensure a smooth and transparent knowledge-sharing of the projects’ activities and its main deliverables by all the partners, and eventually to raise awareness towards relevant stakeholders and a wider audience of the benefits of such a project for their community.

Besides, given the high innovation potential of the project itself a targeted communication and dissemination towards external entities is necessary to enhance and maximise at European level the benefits of such projects to stimulate a wider uptake of such STEAM curricula.

To achieve those objectives Eurisy is developing a dedicated website to be used as the main channel for the projects’ news.

Stay tuned more is yet to come!   

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The recording of the GI4Schools introductory webinar is available here.

[1] Horizon2020 Project, Perform- The Art of Science Learning. January 2017. http://www.perform-research.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/D5.1-Sustainability-Plan-1.pdf

[2] S. Stolton, The future for STEM in Europe, Euractiv, July 6^th 2020. https://www.euractiv.com/section/digital/linksdossier/the-future-for-stem-in-europe/

[3] United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, Girls’ and women’s education in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). https://en.unesco.org/stemed

[4] OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), 2018. https://www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/pisa-2018-results.htm