Country Fact Sheets based on the Degree of Urbanisation

Testing the Degree of Urbanisation at the global level

Testing the degree of urbanisation at the global level

Please select a country from the list below to generate the report.
It is also possible to download a PDF version.

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Country summary

Introduction

This country summary is provided to support the assessment of the degree of urbanisation by national statistical institutes. The goal of this assessment is to see whether the degree of urbanisation accurately captures a country's cities, smaller settlements and rural areas.
Please note that inaccuracies in this country summary may be due to data quality. The results presented here are based on a combination of two data sources: population and built-up areas.

The population source data are collected by the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) mostly from the national statistical offices - more information on the reference years and the geographic scale can be found below.
Built-up areas are detected by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre using the Global Human Settlement Layer method on satellite imagery from Landsat.
The degree of urbanisation can be applied to other data (e.g. census updates, better spatial resolution) that may improve the available classification.
The degree of urbanisation is applied first to a population distribution grid. The results at the grid level are subsequently used to classify municipalities. This second step could not be applied to the globe as municipal boundaries were not consistently available.

Degree of urbanisation
Urban centre
Urban cluster
Rural grid cell (transparent)
The QR Code on the right opens an interactive version of the map above (minimum screen width resolution required: 600 pixels).

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Population (2015)

Built-up area (sq km, 2015)

Land (sq km, 2015)

Urban centres cover x sq km of land
and towns and suburbs
cover y sq km
Degree of urbanisation
Urban centre
Urban cluster
Rural grid cell

Population (left) and Built-up area (in sq km, right) by degree of urbanisation

Definitions
Urban centre (in red) defines a city:
An urban centre consists of contiguous grid cells of 1 sq km with a density of at least 1500 inhabitants per sq km and a minimum total population of 50 000.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Urban_centre
Urban cluster (in orange) defines towns and suburbs:
An urban cluster consists of contiguous grid cells of 1 sq km with a density of at least 300 inhabitants per sq km and a minimum total population of 5 000.
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Urban_cluster
Rural grid cell (trasparent/light grey) defines rural areas:
Grid cells of 1 sq km with a density below 300 inhabitants per sq km and other grid cells outside urban clusters or centres (see above).
http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Glossary:Rural_grid_cell

Notes about data:

The degree of urbanisation classifies municipalities based on their population share in three types of grid cells: 'Cities' have the majority of their population in an urban centre; 'Towns and suburbs' have the majority of their population in an urban cluster, but are not cities; 'Rural areas' have the majority of their population in rural grid cells.
For this summary, we have not been able to classify municipalities, but for ease of reading it refers to the types of grid cells using the three classes of municipalities.

In case of cross-border settlement areas, only population and surfaces estimates related to the Country are considered in the national figures.

The summary includes results from automatic data analytics workflows including global best available satellite data records collected by the Landsat Earth Observation program and census data made available by National Statistical Offices. The data is aggregated in four reference years 1975, 1990, 2000, 2015. They should be considered as nominal dates aggregating the best suitable data in the given period. Despite the best efforts done, unavoidable information gaps in specific locations can result from unavailability of suitable satellite data or census data. In particular, the uncertainty of the estimates is increasing in the older reference years.

This summary has been generated using multi-temporal GHSL datasets for the years 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2015, from the Community pre-Release of GHS Data Package (GHS CR2018).

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Degree of urbanisation
Urban centre
Urban cluster
Rural grid cell (transparent)
The QR Code on the right opens an interactive version of the map above (minimum screen width resolution required: 600 pixels).

Baseline data source -

The population distribution layer has been produced using census information provided by CIESIN (GPWv4.10).
The total number of populated census units used is , having the average size of km2.
The reference year of the population source data is .
The statistics presented in this document are based on the country borders as defined in the database of Global Administrative Areas, (GADM v2.8).

Disclaimer:

The designations employed and the presentation of material on this map do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the European Union concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.
Kosovo: This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSCR 1244/1999 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.
Palestine: This designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the Member States on this issue.
The Urban Centres are delineated from spatial grids in equal area World Mollweide geographical projection at 1x1 km resolution. The visualisation of this map is provided in Web Mercator projection, resulting in an apparent visual distortion of the original grid shape.