Sensing Global Changes in the Local Patterns of Energy Consumption in Cities During the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19, and the wider social and economic impacts that a global pandemic entails, have led to unprecedented reductions in energy consumption globally. Whilst estimates of changes in energy consumption have emerged at the national scale, detailed sub-regional estimates to allow for global comparisons are less developed. Using night-time light satellite imagery from December 2019-June 2020 across 50 of the world’s largest urban conurbations, we provide high resolution estimates (450m2) of spatio-temporal changes in urban energy consumption in response to COVID-19. Contextualising this imagery with modelling based on indicators of mobility, stringency of government response, and COVID-19 rates, we provide novel insights into the potential drivers of changes in urban energy consumption during a global pandemic. Our results highlight the diversity of changes in energy consumption between and within cities in response to COVID-19, somewhat refuting dominant narratives of a shift in energy demand away from dense urban areas. Further modelling highlights how the stringency of the government’s response to COVID-19 is likely a defining factor in shaping resultant reductions in urban energy consumption.

Measuring and Monitoring Urban Impacts on Climate Change from Space

As urban areas continue to expand and play a critical role as both contributors to climate change and hotspots of vulnerability to its effects, cities have become battlegrounds for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Large amounts of earth observations from space have been collected over the last five decades and while most of the measurements have not been designed specifically for monitoring urban areas, an increasing number of these observations is being used for understanding the growth rates of cities and their environmental impacts. Here we reviewed the existing tools available from satellite remote sensing to study urban contribution to climate change, which could be used for monitoring the progress of climate change mitigation strategies at the city level. We described earth observations that are suitable for measuring and monitoring urban population, extent, and structure; urban emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants; urban energy consumption; and extent, intensity, and effects on surrounding regions, including nearby water bodies, of urban heat islands. We compared the observations available and obtainable from space with the measurements desirable for monitoring. Despite considerable progress in monitoring urban extent, structure, heat island intensity, and air pollution from space, many limitations and uncertainties still need to be resolved. We emphasize that some important variables, such as population density and urban energy consumption, cannot be suitably measured from space with available observations.

FRAMEWORK FOR MEASURING URBAN ENERGY SECURITY : CITIZEN PERSPECTIVE

The ever increasing urban energy consumption has always been an important issue of urban energy security. Citizen plays critical role in shaping the energy consumption. Therefore, citizen perspective can give significant impact to urban energy security evaluation. This research aims to provide a systematic framework to measure urban energy security taking into account the perspective of citizen and showcase its implementation in a case of Bandung city. The proposed framework is a straight five stages process as follow; (1) establishing the urban context, (2) defining energy security relevant to the context, (3), determining dimensions of energy security , (4) determining indicators and and metrics, and (5) the final stage is calculating energy security. The implementation case shows Bandung’s energy security is at Middle Low status. It also verify that the framework is operationally viable and it can capture the significance of citizen perspective.