Moland-Change Belgrade: Monitoring Land Use Change by Remote Sensing in the Belgrade Region

Project Leader: Dr. Klaus Steinnocher

End: 12.2001

In the frame of the mission of the Joint Research Centre to provide scientific and technical support for the definition and implementation of European Union policies, the Space Applications Institute is carrying out a project on Monitoring Land Use Changes (MOLAND). MOLAND aims to define and validate a methodology in support to European sectorial policies with territorial and environmental impacts such as the Regional Development and the Trans-European Network for Transport. The reference framework for MOLAND is set by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the Trans-European Network (TEN). Information requirements from other policies, such as Enlargement, External Relations and Development are also considered.

MOLAND aims to:
Characterise European areas highlighting their strengths and weaknesses;
This is achieved by the quantification and monitoring of spatial issues of European significance with particular regards to the urban development trends, environmental pressure, evolution of built-up areas and impact of transport network and infrastructure on the landscape.
Assess the impacts of policies through scenarios;
Developing scenarios of growth for areas of interest will serve as major input to formulate and evaluate mid/long term strategy for sustainable development.

MOLAND comprises three interrelated packages:

	Change detection (CHANGE). Measuring land use change in selected areas in Europe. A period of 50 years is considered. Land uses maps are merged with socio-economic data sets to measure changes over time.
	Understanding (UNDERSTAND). Identifying a number of environmental indicators to be used to measure the “sustainability of areas”. The indicators are used to compare “development potential” of the different studied cities.
	Development of scenarios (FORECAST). Develop “urban growth” scenarios for a selected number of cities, using state of the art urban and system dynamics models.

This project focuses on the CHANGE part of MOLAND for the metropolitan area of Belgrade, Yugoslavia. Objective is the establishment of four land use data bases from the 1960s, 1980s, early and late 1990s. For each date a polygon and a vector coverage will be derived representing land use units and linear features such as street or railway networks respectively. The interpretation key is based on the CORINE land cover nomenclature, but extended by a fourth level for the urban land use categories. The data sets used in this project are space-borne EO data and ancillary information such as city maps, land use inventories or master plans. In addition, socio-economic datasets derived from census statistics for the area of Belgrade will be procured.

Results

The results of the project are digital data bases representing land use information of the Belgrade region from four different points of time.
The reference land use data base produced by photo-interpretation of geocoded IKONOS imagery from the year 2000, consists of several layers. Land use entities larger than one hectare are represented as polygons in the land use layer. Roads, railways, canals and rivers smaller than 25m were digitised as linear features and filed in separate vector layers. Linear features wider than 25 m and additional transport structures were digitised both as linear features and polygons. In addition bombed areas, with a destroyed area larger than one hectare, were digitised in a separate layer. Bombed areas smaller than one hectare were provided in a point layer.
The historical data bases were derived from visual interpretation of IRS (1997), KFA (1987) and CORONA imagery (1969). The design of their layers is identical to that of the reference data base, except for the bombed areas, that do not appear in the historical data bases.
In addition to the land use data bases statistical data sets were delivered to the European Commission. The numerical data sets, provided by Belgrade City Authorities, were assigned to a polygon layer. The data sets comprise socio-economic information on the 16 municipalities of the Belgrade region derived from the census.