The Global Human Settlements Layer 2023 is now out
The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) project produces global spatial information, evidence-based analytics, and knowledge describing the human presence on the planet. A new and improved package of datasets has been produced and publicly released. Take a look at the main features of GHSL 2023 in the full article.
What is the GHSL project?
More than 130 trillions of individual image data records collected by different satellite sensors in the past 40 years have been processed for predicting the share of land surface covered by a roofed built-up structure, discriminating between residential and non-residential functional uses. This is done by processing images collected in different seasons, illumination conditions and any different geographical location and building practices.
The presence of a building is the concrete sign of the human presence as recognized from space technologies. This large amount of information is aggregated in this small picture showing the density of buildings per unit surface in the whole landmass, as understood by the machines automatically analyzing the image data: from darker (no buildings recognized) to brighter (spatial units full of buildings – or high density of buildings).
The data is organized in 12 epochs: from 1975 to 2030 in equal time intervals of 5 years. Future predictions are extrapolated by observing the past spatial-temporal data trends. The pulsing of the white patches is a representation of the human activity in making new buildings in the considered time interval 1975-2030. It is the first time that humanity can be made aware of these information, thanks to the most recent advances on spatial data mining technologies, and the availability of open and free image data input. This is an important improvement for a number of thematic applications that rely on the GHSL time series. With the historic reference data it is possible for the first time to quantify the accuracy of the multi-temporal model.
What is new about GHSL 2023?
The knowledge generated with the GHSL is supporting the definition, the public
discussion and the implementation of European policies and the monitoring of international frameworks such as the 2030 Development Agenda. Now it can do it even better.
The differences between the products in the previous GHS P2019 dataset and those in the current GHS P2023 release are substantial. They include new and more precise 10m-resolution sub-pixel fraction built-up surface estimations, new semantics (i.e., residential vs. non-residential), building height estimates, and new seamless interpolated spatial raster datasets at 100m-resolution with equal time intervals of 5 years from 1975 to 2030. Other novelties include:
1. Allocation of population according to the presence of residential (RES) built-up volume;
2. Country total population time series aligned to the latest UN World Population Prospects 2022
3. Temporal population estimates anchored to the UN “urban agglomeration” population time series of the latest UN World Urbanization Prospects 2018 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2018)
For more detailed information, check the full report on the new GSHL Data Package 2023. The new GHSL P2023 data is also available at the GHSL download portal or at the GHSL collection at the JRC Open Data Repository
