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Cities occupy less than 1% of the Earth’s surface, but house over half the global population. Urban ecosystems play a key role in filtering air and water, mitigating urban heat islands, and improving human well-being through green spaces. However, rapid and unplanned urban growth strains natural ecosystems, leading to their degradation and increasing climate vulnerability of urban communities.
Urban Nature Based Solutions (NBS) offer a way to address these challenges by integrating natural processes into cities, enhancing resilience to climate change, and improving urban quality of life.
Earth observation (EO) data plays an increasingly important role in supporting urban NBS planning and implementation. EO data can provide valuable insights on the environmental changes and climate risks surrounding urban ecosystems. This information in turn supports more effective planning and implementation of NBS to address climate adaptation hazards such as floods, droughts, urban heat islands, and rapid biodiversity loss.
Utilizing the newest advances in EO data for NBS, the UNEP-DHI Centre is developing an online tool to support upscaling of urban NBS climate solutions, under UNEP’s Generation Restoration initiative (2023-2025).
An example of the pilot city workspace, showcasing the Annual Surface Water Frequency in Dakar, within the NBS tool @UNEP-DHI 2024
The Generation Restoration project is funded by the Federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by UNEP with the support of – and in coordination with- the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and ICLEI’s Global Biodiversity Center.
About the Urban NBS tool
The Urban NBS Tool developed by UNEP-DHI will support the identification and assessment of key environmental data in the project cities, with the goal to better understand climate risks and NBS potential to address these risks within the pilot cities. The tool draws on available EO data for indicators that inform flood and drought risks, urban heat island concentration areas and changes in biodiversity and green spaces. Application of such data and indicators at a high resolution in the project pilot cities can help to screen urban hotspots for high climate risks, identify NBS potential areas, as well as track changes and effectiveness of NBS implementation over time.
Eight pilot cities have been included in the development of the NBS Tool (in blue on the map below):
- Douala, Cameroon
- Dakar-Plateau & Thies, Senegal
- Quezon City in Metro Manila, Philippines
- Kochi, India
- Sirajganj, Bangladesh
- Samborondon, Ecuador
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Manaus, Brazil
Map of generation restoration cities, the pilot cities for the NBS Tool are in blue.
The tool is co-developed by the UNEP-DHI Centre and city representatives, working closely together on analysing the data and developing the most useful functionalities for the pilot cities. The tool is expected to be publicly available in early 2025.
Read more about the project:
https://www.decadeonrestoration.org/generation-restoration-cities-urban-nature-restoration
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- Last updated: November 11, 2024
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UNEP DHI Partnership – Centre on Water and Environment
Agern Allé 5, 2970 Denmark
Tel: +45 45169200