Since 2017, GEO has made considerable efforts to bolster its support of urban resilience. One of the many successes has been building a strong relationship with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat).
All GEO Members face challenges, of varying kinds and to varying degrees, in developing urban areas to become more sustainable and resilient. Earth observations have much to offer in this regard and GEO is well positioned to offer knowledge, methods, services, and tools, co-designed with users, to meet these challenges.
There are numerous application areas for Earth observations, which support the monitoring, reporting and development of plans to tackle environmental issues in cities, such as air pollution, heat islands, flood risk monitoring and water resources management. All of these topics and numerous others are key for urban resilience, sustainable urbanisation, and urban heritage conservation because they provide insights and data for past, present and possible future situations in cities. It should be noted that the term “urban resilience” is not intended to be restrictive to large urban areas and includes consideration of all human settlements. The term has been chosen as it is in common use within the relevant community and is understood as mutually supportive with the term “sustainable urbanisation”.
