Resilient Cities

WEO's Resilient Cities offering uses satellite imagery and AI to map impermeable surfaces, monitor urban land cover change and detect urban heat patterns to support planning and climate adaptation. The service combines globally available open-source satellite data (including Copernicus Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3) with locally-trained machine and deep learning algorithms to generate high-resolution derived layers at 1-metre resolution with seasonal or annual update frequency.

Outputs include impermeability maps, urban heat island indicators, tree cover and health assessments, blue-green infrastructure monitoring, and change detection over time — all delivered as actionable EO-derived indicators that cities and municipalities can use to design interventions for water cycle restoration, flood risk reduction, and heat mitigation. The processing pipeline is hosted on AWS and the product is positioned for non-technical public sector users including city planners, arborists, developers and municipal governments. Reached TRL 9 with operational deployment across 10+ cities in Belgium and Luxembourg, including Brussels, Gent and Luxembourg City, with ESA Space Solutions support.