Engagement and outreach
The Degree of Urbanisation is a method to delineate cities, towns, suburbs and rural areas for international statistical comparison. It has been adopted by the 51st Statistical Commission of the United Nations. This training provides the necessary background to apply independently the Degree of Urbanisation method. We offer a multi-level learning experience across the various aspects of the Degree of Urbanisation, to help understanding what it is and how it can be applied to your own data. Applications include Sustainable Development Goals monitoring and breakdown by urbanisation class, disaster risk management, environmental and climate investigations, demography, development and cooperation.
Statisticians, geographers, digital cartography technicians, administrative officers in the spatial planning domain, policy makers in territorial planning at national and subnational levels. Researchers in the domain of Earth Observation may also be interested.
The UN, the JRC and partners are conducting dedicated training in many countries and regions, aiming at building the capacity and supporting national statistical systems:
Success stories from pilot countries are spreading to other countries and the community is growing. The events co-organised with international organisations and partners, include:
The map below shows the status of the dissemination of the methodology. Each country is colour coded according to the status of the dissemination.
A table with a summary of the implementation and dissemination activities carried out on a specific country can be viewed by clicking on the country.
Legend:
UN-Habitat first organised an expert group meeting to discuss this method in Brussels in 2017. The FAO and GSARS have presented the work at several forums that include the 7th International Conference on Agricultural Statistics in 2016, the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Food Security, Agricultural and Rural Statistics in 2016, 2017 and 2018 and at various meetings of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of GSARS. FAO and GSARS have engaged with seven countries to test and discuss in particular the level 2 of the Degree of Urbanisation: Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, France, Malaysia, Pakistan and the USA (GSARS 2018).
The European Commission has discussed this method with Australia, Brazil, Korea, Malaysia, India, South Africa, Turkey, the USA and Uganda. The OECD has organised a bilateral workshop in Uzbekistan and in Kazakhstan in July 2019 and in Moscow in September 2019. It has also discussed this method with Morocco, Tunisia and Vietnam. The World Bank has discussed this work with Haiti, Jordan and Turkey.
This work has also been presented at multiple international conferences. It was presented in a side-event during the last three meetings of the UN Statistical Commission and during the last two meetings of the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM). It was also presented during two UN World Data Forums, two World Urban Forums, the IAOS conference in 2018, the World Statistical Congress in 2017, the OECD World Forum in 2018 and the Inter-Agency Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goals in 2019.
The methodology has been endorsed by the 51st session of the UN Statistical Commission in 2020.