After the launch of the Copernicus Sentinels 1 (2014), 2 and 3 (2015) by the European Space Agency, the availability of free Earth Observation (EO) data streams will provide new
opportunities for innovative scientific and commercial geo-information services. With their
given spatial resolution and revisiting times, the potential of Sentinel missions to support a
wide range of urban planning applications is high. Recently, the ERA.Net-RUS project
GEOURBAN developed a set of EO-based indicators for urban planning and a software tool
for their on-line evaluation. It focused on the local scale; however, planning in peri-urban areas
is particularly important for Russia, given its huge territory and its high number of large cities
and scattered settlements. Standard EO-based spatial datasets, such as the European Urban
Atlas have proven to be valuable for planning. However, this data exists only for the large and
medium European cities, but not for the Russian ones. To this end, the main objective of the
SEN4RUS (exploiting Sentinels for supporting urban planning applications at city and regional
levels in Russia) project is to take into account the specific requirements of urban planning in
Russia to develop indicators that effectively exploit the information content provided by
Sentinels in support of urban planning. Using the basic techniques developed by the
GEOURBAN project, SEN4RUS will design and implement Sentinel-based services for
planners that are tailored to the Russian requirements. A key instrument for the
implementation of such services is the development of a Web-based Information System –
WIS. Three Russian cities with different typologies and planning perspectives have been
included as case studies. To engage users from these cities in the project, a Community of
Practice approach will be employed. Adaptation of the SEN4RUS WIS to forthcoming missions
have also been planned, thus a fully operational tool is expected in the future.