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

Earth observation is a crucial source of accurate and up-to-date information of Earth’s natural and manmade environments that are critical when planning for, responding to, and mitigating the effects of natural hazards. Satellites that regularly collect images of the entire globe combined—with machine learning algorithms to process them more efficiently—have the potential to provide timely, standardized, verifiable, and scalable information. This report focuses on the use of Earth observation to identify built-up areas exposed to natural hazards. It describes the World Settlement Footprint (WSF) suite of derived 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. These gridded datasets capture the extent of built-up areas from 1985–2015 and again for 2019, estimated building heights, impervious surfaces, and estimated population. Earth observation derived information is particularly useful for standardized and recurring World Bank operations. The report looks at several World Bank operations, and the key insights provided through analysis incorporating the various WSF suite products.