1. The European Urban Atlas project
Michael Albás
Unit C2 – Urban Development and Territorial Cohesion

2. GMES – joint EC+ESA initiative 1998
User-requirements – consolidation – Urban Audit
Land Monitoring Fast-Track Service
CORINE Land Cover update + Urban Atlas
Downstream services

4. Urban Atlas project
GMES

5. How did we arrive at the Urban Atlas specification?
GMES foresaw a bottom-up approach
MOLAND model – Towards an Urban Atlas
Regions and stakeholders were consulted (2005) to define needs and the path to achieve them
Classification is CLC level 4 but compromised due to scale and economics (source data and methodology)
Result is rather more of a top-down solution, more relevant from a European perspective
Potential …indicators … integration ….

10. 2 pilot sites (10x10 km) Bremen & Badajoz
Standard input data:
SPOT 5 data
TeleAtlas street network
Topographic maps
Mapping guidelines
Reference scale 1:10,000
Mapping unit 0,25 ha = 50m x 50m

11. Where are we today? Call for tender just launched:
185 cities (LUZ) this year, 133 in 2010
Budget 2008 to 2010 = €1,000,000
ESA supplies images
To be renewed twice for a year
Reference year year
Goal is to cover all Urban Audit LUZs
Ideally, updating should be less expensive and could be envisaged every 3 years
Next update for reference year 2011

13. For more information: corinne.hermant@ec.europa.eu michael.albas@ec.europa.eu
State of European Cities Report: