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GHSL - Global Human Settlement Layer

Open and free data and tools for assessing the human presence on the planet

GHS-UCDB R2019A

GHS Urban Centre Database 2015, multitemporal and multidimensional attributes

icon for the Urban Centre database r2019a data collection

JRC Data catalogue

Urban Centre Database UCDB R2019A

The GHS Urban Centre Database (GHS-UCDB) describes spatial entities called “urban centres” according to a set of multitemporal thematic attributes gathered from the GHSL sources integrated with other sources available in the open scientific domain.

The Urban Centres are defined by specific cut-off values on resident population and built-up surface share in a 1x1 km uniform global grid.

The input data is generated by the GHSL, and the operating parameters are set in the frame of the “degree of urbanisation” (DEGURBA) methodology.

This data can be visually explored in the Urban Centres database section of our website (based on data version v1.0).

Updated version: On the 18/04/2020 A new update (v1.2) of the Urban Centre Database UCDB R2019A has been released to be downloaded.
The list of improvements is attached below.

Download the Urban Centre Database UCDB R2019A dataset.

Product name:
GHS_STAT_UCDB2015MT_GLOBE_R2019A
Coordinate system:
WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)
Resolutions (rasterised from):
1km (World Mollweide, EPSG:54009)
Detailed information:
Description of the GHS Urban Centre Database 2015

Changelog (v1.2):

  • update of CO2 and PM2 emissions data with the newly released EDGARv5.0 results (Crippa et al., 2019) aligned with the GHSL epochs (1975, 1990, 2000, 2015). This dataset is now based on population-based spatial proxies developed using the GHSL Data Package 2019 (Florczyk et al., 2019).
  • update of the main Urban Centre name by using more reliable algorithm and input data (GISCO and OSM datasets) (v1.1).
  • update of the Travel Time to Country Capital data by fixing issues in the algorithm (v1.1).
  • update of Greenness data by fixing issues in some values (v1.1).
  • some technical improvements:
    • fixing values format, previously encoded as strings.
    • use of gpkg (GeoPackage) OpenSource format to encode UTF-8 characters (needed for new names) (v1.1).