Integrating the MOLAND and the Urban Atlas Geo-databases to Analyze Urban Growth in European Cities

Abstract

The MOLAND (MOnitoring LANd use/cover Dynamics) and the Urban Atlas (UA) are two well-known, detailed data sets of land use/cover information focused on European cities. The MOLAND data set contains a unique time series of land use/cover changes for more than thirty urban areas covering a wide temporal window (1950 to late 1990s). The UA is a more recent project that mapped land use/cover for more than 300 cities for the year 2006. In this paper we discuss the integration of both data sets in order to produce a single geo-database covering an extended time series spanning from 1950 to 2006. The different cartographic specifications of the two input data sets, particularly in terms of spatial and thematic resolution, impeded a straightforward integration. A methodology was therefore set up to harmonize the two data sets and merge them into a consistent and comparable geo-database that can be easily queried and used for both visual and analytical purposes. The usefulness of the newly integrated geo-database was demonstrated by some exploratory analyses of the urban dynamics that occurred during the time span of the combined geo-database. We further 305 306 R. R. Barranco et al. discuss the role of time series of land use/cover data and draw recommendations and directions for future work and research.

Monitoring land take by point sampling: Pace and dynamics of urban expansion in the Metropolitan City of Rome

“…Overall, the values of "land take per-capita" indicator in 2008 (475-508 m 2 per inhabitant) are nearly four times higher than the average value of urban residential area per capita, of a set of representative mid-to-large European cities (Barranco et al, 2014).…”

“…Rome can be regarded as a semi-compact city which, from the 1990s onwards, has evolved into a more scattered and moderately polycentric urban form (Frondoni, Mollo, & Capotorti, 2011;Salvati, 2013;Salvati, Munafo, Gargiulo Morelli, & Sabbi, 2012). The case study is representative of dynamics of urban expansion common to many cities worldwide, which have experienced higher rates of built-up areas expansion with respect to population growth in the past few decades (Bagan & Yamagata, 2012;Barranco et al, 2014;Jat et al, 2008).…”

“…The reference scale, the minimum mapping unit (MMU), and the thematic content of the classification of urban areas, are all critical factors in the search for a more accurate representation of the spatial pattern of built areas. Therefore, within the framework of the MOLAND project (Monitoring Land Use Dynamics), aimed at producing a long-time series geodatabase of urban land use development in Europe, a MMU of 1 ha for artificial surfaces and of 3 ha for non-artificial surfaces is applied (Barranco, Silva, Marin Herrera, & Lavalle, 2014).…”

Future urban development exacerbates coastal exposure in the Mediterranean

“…Future urban extent scenarios could be useful to explore these avenues and inform adaptation and spatial planning authorities what mix of adaptation strategies for different regions could be most effective. Several studies of European cities had shown that even when population decreased urban extent increased 32,33 . This trend is also reflected in our developed spatially explicit urban extent scenarios, where urban extent increases with time under all scenarios, albeit at lower rates in those cases where population declines.…”

Cartographying the real metropolis: A proposal for a data-based planning beyond the administrative boundaries

“…In it, the city is defined as "a local administrative unit (LAU) where the majority of the population lives in an urban center of at least 50 000 inhabitants". Two other units are also defined, the Functional Urban Area -formerly known as larger urban zone (LUZ) -consisting of "a city and its commuting zone", and the Greater City as "an approximation of the urban center when this stretches far beyond the administrative city boundaries" (Dijkstra and Poelman, 2012 Other interesting initiatives have also been developed using these databases, such as the recent European Settlement Map (ESM) project, which uses very high-resolution satellite imagery combined with the general GHSL -Global Human Settlement Layermethodology to support urban policy makers (Florczyk et al, 2016), or the attempt to integrate the MOLAND and Urban Atlas geodatabases (Ribeiro Barranco et al, 2014). All of them are important projects of the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, whose aim is to track urban growth changes systematic and consistently.…”