Characterizing Urban Areas in the 21st Century: A Data-driven Approach

Principal Investigator

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  Suchi Gopal

  Professor of Earth and Environment; Research Professor, Center for Cognitive and Neural Systems and Center for Remote Sensing

Co-Principal Investigator

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  Nathan Phillips

  Professor of Earth & Environment

Professors Sucharita Gopal and Nathan Phillips use a data-driven approach to define sustainability, resiliency, and metabolism metrics to provide cities across the globe with better ways to use data to address real urban challenges by examining the cities of Boston, New York, and Melbourne.

Their research seeks to answer the following questions:

• What data is required for quantifying the metrics of sustainability, resiliency, or metabolism?
• How are the three different in different cities across the globe?
• At what spatial scale should the metrics be defined?
• How can the metrics help in formulating policies related to, smart growth, conservation, green roofs, and other issues?

Publications

Gopal, S., Tang, X., Phillips, N., Nomack, M., Pasquarella, V., & Pitts, J. (2016). Characterizing urban landscapes using fuzzy sets. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, 57, 212-223.

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