ABSTRACT
In its report entitled “State of the World Cities 2006/2007” (United Nations, 2006), the United Nations predicted that the number of urban dwellers worldwide will rise to almost 5 billion by 2030, or 62% of the estimated global population of 8.1 billion. Cities and urban areas will have to expand to accommodate such increases in population, resulting in a variety of social and environmental problems. The corresponding and rapid development and changes in cities and urban areas make timely, accurate, and low-cost spatial information necessary for formulating and monitoring social, economic, and environmental issues that arise in response to increasing population pressures. The synoptic view and the repeatability afforded by Earth observation (EO) sensors offer great potential for the collection of information over urban areas (Small, 2001).
