VU
Session Title:
Community-validated urban climate Rrisk in West African cities - Using Earth Observation and ML techniques
Organized by:
Name | Affiliation | |
Dr. Sophie Naue | sophie.naue@hcu-hamburg.de | HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU) |
Lisa Reudenbach | lisa.reudenbach@hcu-hamburg.de | HafenCity University Hamburg (HCU) |
Francis Anthony Reffel | francisreffell@codohsapa.org | Centre of Dialogue on Human Settlement and Poverty Alleviation (CODOHSAPA) |
Focus:
Urban informal settlements in West Africa are increasingly exposed to flooding, heat stress, environmental degradation, and climate-related geohazards, yet they remain underrepresented in conventional urban climate and disaster risk assessments. This session explores how Earth Observation (EO), ML-enabled urban remote sensing, and community-generated spatial data can be combined into an integrated pipeline to support locally grounded climate resilience and risk-informed urban planning.
The session will highlight the integration of different emerging approaches for settlement-level climate risk assessment, including the use of Sentinel-1/2 data, geospatial foundation models, participatory mapping, drone imagery, and community-led data validation. Particular attention will be given to environmental applications related to flooding, heat stress, land-use change, vulnerability mapping, and climate adaptation in rapidly urbanizing regions.
Contributions will discuss both methodological advances and applied implementation experiences, especially in data-scarce environments across the Global South. The session aims to foster dialogue between remote sensing scientists, urban planners, climate researchers, and community practitioners working on equitable and actionable urban climate services.