Refina

In the Federal Republic of Germany a continuous increase of urban development is recorded since the 1950's. Thereby settlements and transport infrastructure often feature a high degree of impervious surfaces that irreversibly contributes to the loss of fertile soil and its functions. Further effects of this development are the multiple economical pressures on municipalities caused by steadily increasing costs for the maintenance of infrastructure.

Although several endeavours have been made – e.g. the adoption of the federal soil protection law in 1998- the loss of natural or agricultural areas amounted to 130 ha per day in 2000. Because of this, the sustainability council of the federal government promotes further efforts to reduce the sprawl of settlements and transportation infrastructure in Germany to 30 ha per day until the year 2020. At the same time these endeavours aim at the qualitative improvement of urban development.

In this context the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) started the research program 'REFINA' that targets the development and evaluation of innovative concepts for both, a reduction of urban sprawl and a sustainable urban development.

Within the scope of REFINA the chair of remote sensing and the chair of cultural geography of the Julius-Maximilians Universität Wuerzburg accomplish the research project 'Development and Evaluation of a Remote-Sensing-based Land-Use Information System for Urban Areas'. Within this project a remote sensing supported information system for a qualitative and quantitative evaluation of imperviousness and its temporal variation is developed.

The project -which has started in June 2006- is funded for three years and the research topics are conducted in co-operation with the