Abstract
Urban areas, particularly in developing countries face immense challenges such as climate change, poverty, lack of resources
poor land use management systems, and week environmental management practices. Mitigating against these challenges is
often hampered by lack of data on urban expansion, urban footprint and land cover. To support the recently adopted new
urban agenda 2030 there is need for the provision of information to support decision making in the urban areas. Earth
observation has been identified as a tool to foster sustainable urban planning and smarter cities as recognized by the new
urban agenda, because it is a solution to unavailability of data. Accordingly, this study uses high resolution EO data Pleiades
satellite imagery to map and document land cover for the rapidly expanding area of Midrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.
An unsupervised land cover classification of the Pleiades satellite imagery was carried out using ENVI software, whereas
NDVI was derived using ArcGIS software. The land cover had an accuracy of 85% that is highly adequate to document the
land cover in Midrand. The results are useful because it provides a highly accurate land cover and NDVI datasets at localised
spatial scale that can be used to support land use management strategies within Midrand and the City of Johannesburg South
Africa.