The Multi-temporal and Multi-dimensional Global Urban Centre Database to Delineate and Analyse World Cities

Area of Science:

• Geographic Information Science
• Urban Studies
• Environmental Science

Background:

• Monitoring sustainable urban development necessitates comparable geospatial data across diverse thematic areas.
• Existing datasets often lack comprehensive coverage of city extents and multi-temporal attributes.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce the Global Human Settlement Urban Centre Database (GHS-UCDB), the first global database integrating geospatial information with city extents.
• To provide a multi-dimensional and multi-temporal characterization of over 10,000 urban centers worldwide.

Main Methods:

• Geospatial data integration techniques were employed for database creation.
• The Degree of Urbanisation method, utilizing grid cell population density, size, and contiguity, was used for delineating urban centers in 2015.
• Data were compiled across multiple epochs: 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2015.

Main Results:

• The GHS-UCDB contains 28 variables across five domains (geography, socio-economic, environmental, disaster risk reduction, sustainable development).
• Each urban center includes 160 attributes, with validation assessments, offering thematic richness and temporal depth.
• The database provides location and extent information, ensuring consistency for comparative analyses.

Conclusions:

• The GHS-UCDB is a novel resource for comparative analyses of urban centers globally across different time periods.
• This database significantly enhances the capacity for monitoring and understanding sustainable urban development.
• The multi-thematic and multi-temporal nature of GHS-UCDB supports research in various urban-related scientific fields.