Monitoring of land use changes
Discover our innovative land use change monitoring system based on Copernicus Sentinel satellite data, which focuses on the economical use of land resources. The system makes an important contribution to sustainability and provides an improved information basis for policy and planning.

Poster contribution to incora project at LPS 2022
The land use monitoring system developed by mundialis creates annual land use classifications for the whole of Germany using automated procedures. With a resolution of 10m x 10m (pixel size), the classes built-up area, grassland, forest, arable land, vegetationless soil and water are represented. The classification is based on atmospheric-corrected Sentinel-2 data and training data from reference data (e.g. OpenStreetMap).
Using innovative cloud computing solutions, our system processes Copernicus data to derive spatial development indicators. Information needs and indicators are jointly defined and coordinated in an exchange between science, administration and planning practice.
One focus is on the monitoring of settlement and transport areas. Small-scale and large-scale changes in settlement development can be derived from the comparison of land use classifications from different years. Long-term trends in the dynamics of land use in Germany are also made visible.
Our system enables the creation of up-to-date land use maps almost in real time and thus continuously supports decision-makers in politics and business. Change detection is based on land cover maps of different years and enables the calculation of change maps for the six classes.
Sample analyses:
- Germany 2019 – Land cover based on Sentinel-2 data
- Germany 2020 – Land cover based on Sentinel-2 data
- Germany 2019-2020 – Land cover change based on Sentinel-2 data
Your contact
Guido Riembauer <info@mundialis.de> | Telefon: +49 (0)228 / 387 580 80
About incora
Within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, the economical use of land as a resource has been the subject of planning interventions and political measures by the Federal Government for many years. The conflicting land use claims require data bases for the monitoring of settlement and transport land development. The incora project uses the data basis of the Copernicus Sentinel satellites to supplement existing indicators of settlement and transport land development for a nationwide land monitoring and to increase the quality and informative value of the existing indicators. The results are made publicly available in spatial monitoring portals.
The project incora (duration: 12/2018 – 11/2021, FKZ: 19F20579C) was coordinated by the Institut für Landes- und Stadtentwicklungsforschung (ILS) and carried out jointly with the Bundesinstitut für Bau-, Stadt- und Raumforschung (BBSR) and mundialis GmbH & Co. KG.