An Earth observation data cube system for monitoring deforestation and urban development trends in Kenya: a case study of Murang’a County

Abstract

This research considers the development of an earth observation (EO) data cube system to facilitate integration of spatial data analysis in decision making in the country by using Murang’a county as a case study. The primary goal is to develop an infrastructure that provides for effective and efficient analysis of open-access EO data so as to monitor the state of natural resources such as forests and to also track the urban development trends. This infrastructure should have the capacity to detect trends in order for decisions to be made on events such as deforestation and uncontrolled urban developments. Technically, the data cube system aims to overcome challenges in accessing, analyzing and processing huge amounts of geospatial datasets. This is to be achieved through developing the necessary data pipelines to acquire data from open-access satellite image providers such as Sentinel satellites. This data is to be converted from the raw EO data to more usable formats. The case study will be on Murang’a County due to its forests as well as the continued urban development. The forest cover and the urban development patterns will be analyzed from the data and the time-series analysis is expected to provide insights on how to address the negative effects of such changes. The research proposes to use open-source tools and technologies to implement this system with the foundation being on the Open Data Cube framework. Keywords: analysis-ready data, data cube, earth observation data, environmental monitoring, floods, geospatial, spatial planning