1. Total Surface Area and Land Surface Area reporting – experiences from NUTS 2013 and plans for NUTS 2016
ESTAT – E.4 - GISCO

2. reg_area3 - here are the data!

3. Definitions
Total Surface Area (TSA, also called Total Area) – Total Surface Area includes land area and inland waters (lakes, rivers etc.) in the administrative boundaries of countries and sub-national authorities, as defined in EC (1999).
Land Surface Area (LSA) – Total Surface Area excluding lakes, rivers, transitional and coastal waters. Mountainous regions, glaciers, forests, wetlands and other more or less uninhabitable regions as recommended in EC (1999) are included in LSA.
Coastline – The coastline is the line where land surface and water surface border each other. Due to the existence of several coastlines (e.g. median tide, low tide) the mean high tide (EC, 1999) is used as a harmonised definition across the EU.

4. Objective of the Exercise (in order of importance)
1) Good documentation
2) Consistency between EU data and national data
3) Comparability between countries
4) Complete data for all NUTS areas
5) High accuracy surface area statistics
6) Stability of data over time

5. Timeline GISCO WG 2017 – reported on the status
ESMS-ESS-MH compilation
Compilation of Data – latest data arrived in Dec
Publication in December 2017
Compilation of Metadata from NSI

6. Observations
Out of 39 countries – the Eurostat estimated data play a role for published records from 16 countries:
Quality control for EBM, NMA, NSI, Eurostat
Missing data in ESTATS NUTS2013 product (e.g. Albania ).
National GI data not yet aligned with neighbouring countries
Different organizations at National level communicate

7. Compilation of Metadata from NSI

8. Observations from Metadata
Total Surface Area:
Map scales for Input datasets:1:100 – 1: , majority 1:10.000
Different input datasets/thresholds for Islands size accounting
Years from Input Datasets : 2008 – 2016

9. Observations from Metadata
Total Land Area:
Map scales for Input datasets:1:1250 – 1: , majority 1:10.000
Different input datasets/thresholds for Inland Water
Years from Input Datasets : 2001 – 2016

10. Tobler, Waldo “Measuring Spatial Resolution”, Proceedings, Land Resources Information Systems Conference, Beijing, pp

11. Each NSI does the calculation just a slightly bit different
FUTURE: Initial analysis on Metadata suggest to decrease time lag of GI data
FUTURE: Initial analysis on Metadata suggest to converge to a map scale of e.g. 1: or better

12. Metadata analysis – Future work
Update Metadata by NSI for publication
Update Guidelines (1999) how to derive the TSA/TLA
Appropriate Data Map Scales/ Data sources
Definitions
Treatment of inland water/ coastal water
Treatment of islands
Recent GI data

13. New data collection
Based on NUTS 2016, submission for TSA and TLA, starting in May 2018
Fixed Requirement: Submission via EDAMIS
Optional: submit data with TERCET/LAU data submission (reduce burden in NSI)

14. Submission Options for reg_area3
Due to current situation that many NSIs submit their own data instead of adjusting
(I) Full submission system by NSI
(II) Proceed with current system of mixed data by ESTAT+NSI
For (I) and (II) two sub-options:
a) Focus only on NUTS changes keep unchanged countries stable
b) Full new data collection also for unchanged countries
Anyhow E4 calculates/share NUTS2016 TSA/TLA for QA- QC

15. Copernicus land monitoring - service evolution
Urban Atlas, Riparian zones, N2K
6 years
CLC
Urban Atlas, Riparian zones, N2K
Thematic richness
High
medium
low
Update frequency
CLC+
3 years
HRL
Future
HRL
1 year
3 month
HRL
Phenology
2 month
1 month S3
Proba V Land prod-ucts
Global Land prod-ucts
daily
1 m
2 m 5m
10 m
20 m
100 m
1000 m
Spatial resolution

16. Thanks for your attention

17. Current update frequency of products
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
HRL Imperviousness
HRL forest, water, wetland, grassland
Corine Land Cover
Urban Atlas
Riparian zones

18. Background (I)
The European Institutions and other international bodies (e.g. UN, World Bank) need to have reliable, authoritative, comparable Total Surface Areas (TSA) and Land Surface Area (LSA) estimates on a country basis as well by statistical reporting units.
Up to now these data have been provisioned on a voluntary basis by the member states (MS) as part of their reporting under the demographic theme.

19. Previous Status missing methodological description - metadata
missing land surface area estimates for some specific countries – only total surface area
Total(Surface/Land) Area estimates with unclear changes

20. Option I
i) Eurostat calculates TSA and LSA at country level and for all NUTS levels, applying a harmonised method for all countries using GISCO NUTS/COUNTRY boundaries and high resolution water masks from CORINE;
ii) Countries can feedback and correct the GISCO data provided they sufficiently document their methodology;
iii) Eurostat publishes these updated/approved datasets with detailed methodological notes.
A formal update procedure should be established, tied in with the revision of the NUTS.
These boundaries are the official country/NUTS data from the European Mapping Authorities supplied via Eurogeographics, therefore authoritative information.
This dataset is the official land use/land cover dataset submitted by the MS to the EEA and aggregated into a European wide product. A further approach would be to use the higher resolution COPERNICUS dataset (see ) which is at the time of writing in the evaluation phase.

21. Current Status (I) 10 countries accepted ESTAT values
16 countries submitted adjustments
7 countries did not respond
4 countries – in discussion

22. Current Status Methodological description - metadata
Land surface area and Total Surface Area estimates (in future for all)
Start to understand the Total(Surface/Land) Area estimates changes and differences

23. Observation (I)
Good agreement between NSI submitted data and EuroGeographics/Eurostat calculated data, except the edge cases (e.g. Water).
We observe difference between previous and current Country submissions
We observe difference between Country and Eurostat calculations based on EuroGeographics data

24. Observation (II) Two coastline interpretations:
1) United Nations Law of the Sea
2) Implementation of the EuroGeographics dataset

25. Coastline (UN)
Source:

26. Coastline (EG)
ERM-Specifications Objekts „Coastline / Shoreline“ (BA010):  
Definition: The line where a land mass is in contact with a body of water.
Portrayal criteria: The vertical datum for the shoreline should be mean sea high water in tidal maritime zone or normal water.
Source:

27. Treatment of estuaries
UK approach
Source: Standard Area Measurements User Guide

28. Treatment of estuaries
Source:

29. Treatment of inland waters
Austria (inclusion),
Switzerland,
Germany
It would be appropriated if Eurostat could ensure coordination between NSIs with common doubtful territories (PL/DE, AT/DE/CH)
Source:

30. Methods to determine water surface / coastline
CORINE (25ha MMU) : 1:
ERM dataset 1:
Topographic datasets 1:1000-1:
Landuse (1ha MMU)
Water Framework directive dataset 1:
Digitizing from Satellite, Air Photo, Cadastre..
Different input datasets/thresholds for Water Detection

31. Treatment of Extra-Regions ?

32. Roadmap
Publish data as calculated/adjusted by the NSI with appropriate Metadata for the TSA/TLA.
Eurostat will develop a more exhaustive template for data and methods and works with Member States to have them filled consistently
In case no explanation is documented for deviations > 9km2, add Footnote to each record until issues are solved in bilateral discussion with data providers.

33. EUROSTAT QUALITY GRADING SYSTEM

34. Distribution plot of deviations
350 from 1400

35. Issue of NUTS3 with > 20km2