Our Digital Earth - Insights and Opportunities from the World Settlement Footprint

Earth observation is a crucial sourceof accurate and up-to-date information of Earth’s naturaland manmade environments that are critical when planningfor, responding to, and mitigating the effects of naturalhazards. Satellites that regularly collect images of theentire globe combined—with machine learning algorithms toprocess them more efficiently—have the potential to providetimely, standardized, verifiable, and scalable information.This report focuses on the use of Earth observation toidentify built-up areas exposed to natural hazards. Itdescribes the World Settlement Footprint (WSF) suite ofderived datasets, developed by the German Aerospace Center(DLR) in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA),the Google Earth Engine team, and the World Bank. Thesegridded datasets capture the extent of built-up areas from1985–2015 and again for 2019, estimated building heights,impervious surfaces, and estimated population. Earthobservation derived information is particularly useful forstandardized and recurring World Bank operations. The reportlooks at several World Bank operations, and the key insightsprovided through analysis incorporating the various WSFsuite products.