Maps of the sealing levels of the soil help understand the impact on the environment of urban expansion and development of related technical infrastructures. Disturbance patterns with different intensity result from transport, noise, exploitation of natural resources, waste dumping and pollution. The products contribute to analysing and describing land take trends in relation to population development as well as the drivers, pressure, state and impact of land consumption. Various types of thematic analysis can be performed when combining these products with other data such as demographic and economic data, spatial indicators on the exposure to natural hazards, or climate changerelated risks, policy-relevant indicators on essential spatial planning parameters (e.g. land consumption per capita, pressure on protected areas), etc. Similarly to the basic urban mapping products, the ever-increasing amount of relatively affordable medium- and high-resolution data will ensure the continuity of this type of product long into the future. The benefits from the Sentinel-2 mission in particular are similar to those highlighted in earlier sections. |