• About the project
• Objective
• Summary
• Implementation plan
• Results
• Tasks
  • Phase 1
  • Phase 2
  • Phase 3
  • Phase 4
  • Phase 5
• Publications

Summary

As early as 1997, half of the Globe population has lived in cities, and this percentage will increase continuously. Planet Earthwill become an urban environment.  A high level of vulnerability to natural instabilities characterizes cities, by definition fragile socio-economic systems, creating premises for multiple malfunctions and risks. Therefore, the mitigation of urban systems vulnerability to environmental instabilities will result in significant reductions of the costs in case of natural disasters occurrence.  

The objective of this research aims to evaluate environmental vulnerability patterns in a time-space framework, due to natural and anthropogenic factors. The objective is achieved via diachronic cartography and radar interferometry (InSAR) techniques, correlated with geomorphological mapping and multicriterial statistical approaches based on census data (1992, 2002 and 2012).

Acquisition of TerraSAR-X data are sponsorised by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Results capture the space-time evolution history of the city and the vulnerability of the natural support, in relation to the physical and the socio-economic vulnerabilities.