Construct Flexible Urban Delineations
Apply the majority rule algorithm
Identify urban areas by applying a threshold on grid cells
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of rural cells
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of urban centres
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of urban clusters
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of water cells
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Create the DEGURBA spatial units classification
Convert regions to a grid
Crop GHSL data to the provided extent
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of rural cells
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of urban centres
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of urban clusters
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification of water cells
Create the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Create the DEGURBA spatial units classification
Get the parameters for the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Get the optimal built-up area threshold
Load the grid data for Belgium to reconstruct DEGURBA classification
Plot the grid cell classification
Plot the spatial units classification
Preprocess the data for the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Preprocess the data for the DEGURBA spatial units classification
Download data products from the GHSL website
Fill gaps in clusters of cells
Identify adjacent cells
Identify clusters of cells that meet the criteria
Get the parameters for the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Preprocess the data for the DEGURBA spatial units classification
Detect patches of cells
Load the grid data for Belgium to reconstruct DEGURBA classification
Load the data for three urban proxies for Belgium
Pipe operator
Plot the grid cell classification
Plot the spatial units classification
Preprocess the data for the DEGURBA grid cell classification
Preprocess the data for the DEGURBA spatial units classification
Enables the construction of flexible urban delineations that can be tailored to specific applications or research questions, see Van Migerode et al. (2024) <DOI:10.1177/23998083241262545> and Van Migerode et al. (2025) <DOI:10.5281/zenodo.15173220>. Originally developed to flexibly reconstruct the Degree of Urbanisation classification of cities, towns and rural areas developed by Dijkstra et al. (2021) <DOI:10.1016/j.jue.2020.103312>. Now it also support a broader range of delineation approaches, using multiple datasets – including population, built-up area, and night-time light grids – and different thresholding methods.
Useful links