Investigation of Urban Environmental Quality Using an Integration of Satellite, Ground based measurement data over Seoul, Korea

This study investigates the potentials of satellite, ground measurement data, and geo-spatial information within an urban area for the mapping of the Urban Environmental Quality (UEQ) parameters. The UEQ indicates a complex and various parameters resulting from both human and natural factors, which are greenness, climate, air pollution, the urban infrastructure, and etc. Multi-spectral remote sensing data from the Landsat ETM and TM sensors for the mapping of air pollution by the Haze Optimized Transform (HOT) technique, Urban Heat Island (UHO using the emissivity-fusion method in Seoul from 2000 to 2006 in fine resolution (30m) were analyzed for the estimation of UEQ index. Although the UHI values are similar ($8.4^{\circ}C{\sim}9.1^{\circ}C$) during these years, the spatial coverage of "hot" surface temperature (> $24^{\circ}C$) significantly increased from 2000 to 2006 due to the rapid urban development. Furthermore, high correlations between vegetation index and land surface temperature were achieved with a correlation coefficients of 0.85 (2000), 0.81 (2001), 0.84 (2002), and 0.89 (2006), respectively. It was found that the proposed method was successfully analyzed spatial structure of the UEQ and the scenarios of the best and worst areas within the city were also identified. Based on the quantifiable fine resolution satellite image parameters, UEQ can promote the understanding of the complex and dynamic factors controlling urban environment.