Urban resilience to environmental stressors via EO-based smart solutions

Cities face a wide variety of pressures, many of which negatively impact the health of both the environment and citizens and require an integrated smart city approach to address. By infusing state-of-the-art Earth observation (EO) into tools for cities, the SMart URBan Solutions for air quality, disasters and city growth (SMURBS) project produced a portfolio of smart solutions based off of and refined by continued engagement and co-design with stakeholders and cities to address real needs, gaps, and issues. This portfolio of EO-driven solutions serves as an openly available archive and depository of city solutions for environmental pressures and aims to enhance urban resilience and sustainability, and therefore, make cities smarter. Within this paper, we describe the SMURBS experience of bringing together city stakeholders and EO experts and building the portfolio of smart urban solutions, concluding with the six foundational aspects distilled from this experience to serve as a playbook for solution builders to ensure the production of fit-for-purpose and effective city solutions.