A review of remote sensing applications in urban planning and management in China

It is well-known that remote sensing technology has played a very important role in the urban planning and management since 1980s. In the past thirty years, as one of spatial data sources, remote sensing datasets, which contain more information of earth surface as compared with usual urban maps, have been used in urban planning and management in China. With the development of remote sensing technology such as the high spatial resolution sensors, 3D laser scanning, data mining and advanced image processing technology, remote sensing can be widely used in the whole range of urban planning processes. In this paper, we firstly make a review of the urban remote sensing applications in urban study and planning by giving examples. Then we identify remote sensing applications in different urban planning stages including master planning, district planning, detailed planning and planning implementation as well as in urban studies. We also analyze the bottlenecks of the remote sensing applications in urban planning and management in China at the end.