Description of the GHS Urban Centre Database 2015

Abstract

The Global Human Settlement Layer Urban Centres Database (GHS-UCDB) is the most complete database on cities to date, publicly released as an open and free dataset - GHS STAT UCDB2015MT GLOBE R2019A V1.0. The database represents the global status on Urban Centres in 2015 by offering cities location, their extent (surface, shape), and describing each city with a set of geographical, socio-economic and environmental attributes, many of them going back 25 or even 40 years in time. Urban Centres are defined in a consistent way across geographical locations and over time, applying the “Global Definition of Cities and Settlements” developed by the European Union to the Global Human Settlement Layer Built-up (GHS-BUILT) areas and Population (GHS-POP) grids. This report contains the description of the dimensions and the derived attributes that characterise the Urban Centres in the database. The document includes notes about methodology and sources. The GHS-UCDB contains information for more than 10,000 Urban Centres and it is the baseline data of the analytical results presented in the Atlas of the Human Planet 2018.