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Land cover - Cities and FUAs

<p style="text-align: justify;">This dataset provides sub-national indicators on land cover in FUAs and Cities.</p>

<h3>Data sources and methodology</h3>

<div class="text-gray-500 px-6"> The land use and land cover indicators are estimated from the WorldCover global dataset. WorldCover is a global land cover product at 10 m resolution for 2021 based on both Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data. WorldCover is used as it provides harmonised, globally consistent coverage at very fine spatial resolution (10 m), enabling the production of comparable subnational indicators on land cover.

These estimates may differ from official subnational land cover statistics due to differences in methodologies, such as top down remote-sensing based estimation versus bottom up cadastral or administrative data, along with differences in satellite imagery sources, spatial resolution, and model accuracy used to detect and classify land cover types.

The land cover classes available are:

<ul> <li>Bare area - includes barren / sparse vegetation, moss and lichen, snow and ice.</li> <li>Inland water</li> <li>Natural and semi-natural vegetated land - includes trees, shrubland, grassland</li> <li>Agricultural area</li> <li>Wetland - includes herbaceous wetland and mangroves</li> <li>Total built-up area</li> </ul>

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<h3>Defining FUAs and cities</h3> <p align="justify">The OECD, in cooperation with the EU, has developed a harmonised <a href="https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-definition-of-cities-and-functional-urban-areas.html">definition of functional urban areas</a> (FUAs) to capture the economic and functional reach of cities based on daily commuting patterns <a href=https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264174108-en>(OECD, 2012)</a>. FUAs consist of: <ol> <li><b>A city</b> – defined by urban centres in the degree of urbanisation, adapted to the closest local administrative units to define a city.</li> <li><b>A commuting zone</b> – including all local areas where at least 15% of employed residents work in the city.</li> </ol> The delineation process includes: <ul> <li>Assigning municipalities surrounded by a single FUA to that FUA.</li> <li>Excluding non-contiguous municipalities.</li> </ul> The definition identifies 1 285 FUAs and 1 402 cities in all OECD member countries except Costa Rica and three accession countries.</p>

<h3>Cite this dataset</h3> <p>OECD Regions, cities and local areas database (<a href=http://data-explorer.oecd.org/s/1vo >Climate projections by scenario, 2030-2060 – Cities and FUAs</a>), <a href=http://oe.cd/geostats>http://oe.cd/geostats</a></p>

<h3>Further information</h3> <ul> <li> <a href=https://localdataportal.oecd.org/>OECD Local Data Portal </a> </li> <li> <a href=https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-regions-and-cities-at-a-glance-2024_f42db3bf-en.html/>OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance </a> </li> </ul> <p align="justify">For questions and/or comments, please email <a href="mailto:CitiesStat@oecd.org">CitiesStat@oecd.org</a>