Supporting solutions based on urban vegetation

Supported by Cerema, the GUS project has developed a method for fine mapping urban vegetation in order to better assess its many ecosystem services. The results obtained in Greater Nancy are available online on the Landia platform (ex Green City) operated by TerraNIS. This platform offers summary indicators at different grids (hexagonal, urban morphological island, IRIS, municipalities, etc.), data explorers and summary dashboards.

🟢 Access to the Nancy demonstrator is open.

🟢 Based almost entirely on THR satellite images, the method can be replicated for any town => the algorithmic codes are available on Cerema's Github.

Building tomorrow's developments today

Developed as part of the Target 2050 project, the Netcarbon application is designed for local authorities and developers who want to assess and optimize the climate performance of their development projects. Thanks to a simple rating system, the solution enables the design of projects aligned with France's 2050 targets in terms of carbon neutrality, zero net land take (ZAN), and heat resilience.

🔵 Service marketed by Netcarbon

Urban overheating indicators

The Sat4BDNB project has made it possible to quantify the urban heat island (UHI) effect on the scale of metropolitan France, and to derive 4 decision-support indicators linked to urban overheating:

• Mitigation strategies index
• Investment cost index
• Mitigation effectiveness index
• Population heat vulnerability index

🟢 The data is freely available on data.gouv.fr and, from April 2025, in the French national building database BDNB

🟢 The project has also operationalized albedo production on a national scale, the collection is freely available on Theia.

Identifying the vulnerability of urban environments during summer heat waves

The project has developed a methodology for classifying areas into Local Climate Zones based exclusively on very high-resolution satellite images. As a result of this work, CEREMA has launched an online LCZ portal for French urban areas with more than 50,000 inhabitants. This portal makes it possible to estimate and visualise the vulnerability of urban areas to heat waves and thus support strategies for adapting to and mitigating these phenomena.

🟢 Cartagene LCZ portal with free access

🟢 The application's coding is open-source on Cerema's github and can be transposed to any city. Shapefile files for Lille and Rayong are available to download in the Resources section of the project page.

Thermography of cities from space

A pioneering project to learn how to use satellite thermal data in cities, Thermocity has delivered a collection of analysis-ready-data thermal images. This collection has been used to generate 4 major product families:

• Evolution of impermeability/artificialization and characterization of vegetation in the city;
• Detection and characterization of thermal anomalies;
• Mapping urban heat islands and diagnosing vulnerability to the associated heat ;
• Urban climate modelling: cross-validation and future climate.

🟢 Free access