Foreword to the Special Issue on Paving the Way for the Future of Urban Remote Sensing

The papers in this special section focus on the technology of urban remote sending. The rapid growth and the multiple changes of the urban environments pose unique challenges to cities across the globe. Due to the high rates of urbanization on our planet, it is often argued that the future of humanity will be decided in cities. This means that innovative solutions are required to develop new ideas and concepts to make cities resilient, sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous at the same time. To ensure sustainable urban development, however, the basis is first of all knowledge about our cities. Efficient monitoring is required of various aspects of the evolution of urban form, for assessing and forecasting interactions with other environments and resources, and for the development of applied solutions to the various urban challenges in terms of planning, safety, health, infrastructure, service provision, etc. Remote sensing is the tool to gain geoinformation in a consistent and systematic way, basically anywhere across the globe, and with it to fill in still existing large data gaps on cities on our planet. With the ever-growing number and types of sensors, recent advances in technologies (e.g., geospatial remote sensing, unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous vehicles, hand-held devices), and large volumes of data available from volunteered geographical information, Internet of Things based systems, etc., urban sensing and modeling remains a thrilling field of research with a more promising outlook for developing practical solutions for such continuously evolving ecosystems.