Data-Driven Planning Approaches for Measuring Urban Ecosystem Services. The Potential of Big Data and Urban Informatics for Planning the Transition of Cities

This paper explores data-driven planning approaches for measuring urban ecosystem services in cities by focusing on the potential of big data. In the face of the ecological and digital transition, technologies’ advancements, big data, and innovative analytical approaches offer novel perspectives on capturing the dynamic interactions within urban ecosystems and contribute to the definition of data-driven planning approaches for the transition of cities. The paper outlines possible approaches to integrating diverse open data sources to gain comprehensive insights into urban ecosystem services measurement in cities by exploiting satellite images and remote sensing technologies in a case study area. For this purpose, two commonly used vegetation indexes have been used, namely the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index and the Leaf Area Index, combined with Land Use data following the urban informatics approach. Results show the potential of data-driven approaches for planning the transition of cities towards sustainability and resilience and the implications of such data and technologies for urban planning and governance.