Detection of unfavourable urban areas with higher temperatures and lack of green spaces using satellite imagery in sixteen Spanish cities

 

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify the most unfavourable areas of a city in terms of high temperatures and the absence of green infrastructure. An automatic methodology based on remote sensing and data analysis has been developed and applied in sixteen Spanish cities with different characteristics. Landsat-8 satellite images were selected for each city from the July-August period of 2019 and 2020 to calculate the spatial variation of land surface temperature (LST). The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was used to determine the abundance of vegetation across the city. Based on the NDVI and LST maps created, a k-means unsupervised classification clustering was performed to automatically identify the different clusters according to how favourable these areas were in terms of temperature and presence of vegetation. A Disadvantaged Area Index (DAI), combining both variables, was developed to produce a map showing the most unfavourable areas for each city. Overall, the percentage of the area susceptible to improvement with more vegetation in the cities studied ranged from 13 % in Huesca to 64–65 % in Bilbao and Valencia. The influence of several factors, such as the presence of water bodies or large buildings, is discussed. Detecting unfavourable areas is a very interesting tool for defining future planning strategy for green spaces.

Funding

NoteProjects funding this work

Citation

Please, cite this work as:

[Rod+22] F. Rodríguez-Gómez, R. Fernández-Cañero, G. Pérez, et al. “Detection of unfavourable urban areas with higher temperatures and lack of green spaces using satellite imagery in sixteen Spanish cities”. In: Urban Forestry & Urban Greening 78 (2022), p. 127783. ISSN: 1618-8667. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127783. URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866722003260.

NoteBibTeX

@article{ufug2022,
    title = {Detection of unfavourable urban areas with higher temperatures and lack of green spaces using satellite imagery in sixteen Spanish cities},
    journal = {Urban Forestry & Urban Greening},
    volume = {78},
    pages = {127783},
    year = {2022},
    issn = {1618-8667},
    doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2022.127783},
    url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1618866722003260},
    author = {Francisco Rodríguez-Gómez and Rafael Fernández-Cañero and Gabriel Pérez and José {del Campo-Ávila} and Domingo López-Rodríguez and Luis Pérez-Urrestarazu},
    keywords = {Urban greening, Remote sensing, Heat island, Normalized difference vegetation index, Landsat-8}
}

Bibliometric data

The following data has been extracted from resources such as OpenAlex, Dimensions, PlumX or Altmetric.

Detection of unfavourable urban areas with higher temperatures and lack of green spaces using satellite imagery in sixteen Spanish cities

Cites

The following graph plots the number of cites received by this work from its publication, on a yearly basis.

Papers citing this work

The following is a non-exhaustive list of papers that cite this work:

1. Alba Márquez Torres, Sudeshna Kumar, Celina Aznarez, et al. (2025). Assessing the cooling potential of green and blue infrastructure from twelve US cities with contrasting climate conditions. Urban forestry & urban greening DOI
2. Afia Ali, Bilal Hussain, Riaz Ul Hissan, et al. (2025). Examining the landscape transformation and temperature dynamics in Pakistan. Scientific Reports DOI
3. Prasanta Kumar Patra, Duryadhan Behera, Vishal Chettry, et al. (2025). Geospatial analysis of unplanned urbanization: impact on land surface temperature and habitat suitability in Cuttack, India. Discover Sustainability DOI
4. Susmita Goswami, Abhishek Kumar (2025). Assessment of hot-springs and geothermal prospects for sustainable energy goals. Journal of Cleaner Production DOI
5. Tomás Bunster, Jorge Gironás (2025). The impact of turf removal on residential water use in a Mediterranean-climate metropolis: is lawn replacement decoupling water use from historical trends?. Urban Water Journal DOI
6. Francisco Rodríguez-Gómez, José del Campo-Ávila, Luis Pérez‐Urrestarazu, et al. (2025). URSUS_LST: URban SUStainability intelligent system for predicting the impact of urban green infrastructure on land surface temperatures. Environmental Modelling & Software DOI
7. Celina Aznarez, Sudeshna Kumar, Alba Marquez-Torres, et al. (2024). Ecosystem service mismatches evidence inequalities in urban heat vulnerability. The Science of The Total Environment DOI
8. Francisco Rodríguez-Gómez, José del Campo-Ávila, Domingo López-Rodríguez, et al. (2024). URSUS_UHI: URban SUStainability software for detection of unfavourable areas due to the Urban Heat Island effect. SoftwareX DOI
9. Dhruv Saxena, Mahender Choudhary, Gunwant Sharma (2023). Land use and land cover change impact on characteristics of surface evapotranspiration in semi-arid environment of Western Rajasthan, India. Water Practice & Technology DOI
10. Manuel Delgado-Capel, Paloma Cariñanos, Marcos Escudero-Viñolo (2023). Capacity of Urban Green Infrastructure Spaces to Ameliorate Heat Wave Impacts in Mediterranean Compact Cities: Case Study of Granada (South-Eastern Spain). Land DOI
11. Uliana Sokolenko, Yanina Honcharenko, Nadiia Oleksiichenko (2023). The Use of GIS Technologies for the Analysis and Monitoring of Green Infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Lecture notes in networks and systems DOI