**Author details**

in the near-infrared compared to Landsat, for example, provide more spectral information necessary for unmixing techniques. Although these bands are designed for detecting and discriminating between different vegetation types, and their main advantage lies in this kind of applications, they can be proven useful for differentiating between urban materials as well. Further analysis is, though, needed to come to conclusions on using the red-edge bands for urban monitoring. Finally, Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B will provide frequent acquisitions with a revisit of 5 days in the equator and, in combination with the large swath of 290 km, the potential of updating the surface cover information is significantly increased. Thus, the increased temporal resolution substantiates the urban surface cover monitoring even in areas

The application of the downscaling method described in this chapter was demonstrated through an example using MODIS thermal data. With the use of the Sentinel-2 imagery, the surface cover characterization is expected to be improved significantly as discussed earlier. Moreover, the OLCI spectral bands measuring in VNIR share some common bands with Sentinel-2 MSI and this may allow further exploitation for updating the surface cover. Since, the Sentinels are developed for synergies [30], algorithms that exploit the common bands of OLCI and MSI may increase the accuracy of surface characterization and emissivity

The urban surface cover and the urban LST are essential to map and monitor in urban climate studies. This chapter demonstrates the use of satellite Earth observation geo-spatial data to assist the study of urban climate. The methods proposed here can be easily adapted to the Sentinels, which will have high revisit rate, and thus to provide high spatial and temporal resolution LST products for urban areas. Approaches like the ones described in this chapter can become operational once adapted to Sentinels, since their long-term operation plan guarantees the future supply of satellite observations. Thus, the described methods may support planning activities related to climate change mitigation and adaptation in cities, as well as routine urban planning activities. It is therefore expected to advance the current knowledge of the impacts of the intra-urban LST variability on urban energy budget and hence on both

The project leading to this application has received partial funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 637519 (URBANFLUXES) and partial funding from the project SEN4RUS (MIS Τ3ΕΡΑ-00101) which is funded by the Operational Programme "Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (NSRF 2014–2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional

with persistent cloud cover.

142 Multi-purposeful Application of Geospatial Data

estimation.

**5. Conclusions**

**Acknowledgements**

Development Fund).

urban heat island and energy consumption in cities.

Zina Mitraka\* and Nektarios Chrysoulakis

\*Address all correspondence to: mitraka@iacm.forth.gr

Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Heraklion, Greece
