The Spectrascapes Dataset: Street-view imagery beyond the visible captured using a mobile platform

Abstract

High-resolution data in spatial and temporal contexts is imperative for developing climate resilient cities. Current datasets for monitoring urban parameters are developed primarily using manual inspections, embedded-sensing, remote sensing, or standard street-view imagery (RGB). These methods and datasets are often constrained respectively by poor scalability, inconsistent spatio-temporal resolutions, overhead views or low spectral information. We present a novel method and its open implementation: a multi-spectral terrestrial-view dataset that circumvents these limitations. This dataset consists of 17,718 street level multi-spectral images captured with RGB, Near-infrared, and Thermal imaging sensors on bikes, across diverse urban morphologies (village, town, small city, and big urban area) in the Netherlands. Strict emphasis is put on data calibration and quality while also providing the details of our data collection methodology (including the hardware and software details). To the best of our knowledge, Spectrascapes is the first open-access dataset of its kind. Finally, we demonstrate two downstream use-cases enabled using this dataset and provide potential research directions in the machine learning, urban planning and remote sensing domains.