Using satellite imagery to optimise urban cooling

Blue-green infrastructures are designed to reduce rising temperatures in densely built cities. But it takes time for new green spaces, trees, ponds, fountains and the like to produce measurable cooling effects. In a novel study, researchers from D-BAUG and Eawag created a method to quantify this time span using open-source satellite data from NASA. They distinguish between six planting structures and analyze their respective benefits for temperature reduction.