Google Earth Engine Advancing Urban Land Change Science

As a prominent cloud-based remote sensing platform, Google Earth Engine (GEE) emerged as a new avenue for addressing urban land change science, which aims to uncover how urban land has changed in response to both anthropogenic and natural drivers. In this chapter, we provide an in-depth introduction of both the technical and scientific aspects of GEE. In particular, we reviewed GEE progress in four specific areas of urban studies: urban extent mapping, urbanization estimation, urban ecosystem characterization, and city accessibility assessment. Two state-of-the-art research examples were then further elaborated to echo the urban extent mapping and ecosystem characterization, respectively. At the end, we summarized the advantages of GEE in urban land change science and provided future prospects.