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A free, open-source tool for identifying urban agglomerations using polygon data

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Abstract

This paper describes the function of a software tool for identifying urban agglomerations in low-information settings using free, open data. The framework outlined here is designed to work using polygon data. This paper describes the advantages and disadvantages of using polygon-based geographies in regional analysis, discusses the practical and ethical challenges of distinguishing urban from rural regions, and discusses the relevance of this tool in the analysis of global city regions. It also describes the logical structure of our polygon-based software tool and directs interested readers to the source code. We finally examine the agglomeration results for Sri Lanka and compare them with published urbanization figures. We conclude that there are very large disparities between our model’s outputs and the urbanization estimates from the United Nations and that our tools can be used as a less discretionary way to identify actual levels of urbanization. We hope that other analysts will continue to refine the progression toward a less discretionary model of identifying urban regions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Architecture, Building, and Planning, The University of Melbourne, Room 520, 757 Swanston St., Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Jennifer Day

  2. Faculty of Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Yiqun Chen

  3. South Asia Urban Development Unit, The World Bank, 1818 H Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20433, USA

    Peter Ellis & Mark Roberts

Authors
  1. Jennifer Day
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  2. Yiqun Chen
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  3. Peter Ellis
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  4. Mark Roberts
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Correspondence to Yiqun Chen.

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Day, J., Chen, Y., Ellis, P. et al. A free, open-source tool for identifying urban agglomerations using polygon data. Environ Syst Decis 37, 68–87 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-017-9623-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10669-017-9623-z

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