MURBANDY PROJECT

(Monitoring URBAN DYnamics)

MURBANDY foresees the production of “current” and “historical” (past) land use databases. The historic land use databases will be used in combination with the current land use databases to model trends in urban growth as well as scenarios of urban development.

MURBANDY hopes to provide a synoptic view of Europe's urban agglomerations. Structural changes will be measured and analysed in order to characterise past and future trends of urban landscapes.

There is a lack of comparable datasets on urban areas in Europe. Current datasets, used for urban studies, rely on data collected in very fine detail, forming a massive volume that cannot be easily and consistently processed to come up with a synoptic view of the European urban landscape. Moreover, such existing detailed datasets are often collected with different methods and standards and are not suitable for comparison. In general, very detailed datasets are not suitable for synoptic assessment at continental level. Earth Observation data are consistent in space and time and are best suited for continental studies.