In the World Bank, there is an existing heritage of using spatial data to understand urban growth in the region, raising awareness within the respective cities and preparing for WB future involvements.

Main benefit of EO-based land accounting is linked to its capacity to describe and quantify development of land cover classes in time. Distribution of land cover changes supports understanding patterns of urban growth in spatial context.

A segment of the Land cover changes product.

Results

Relative structure of Land cover flows (100% = total area of changes in AOI). Figure shows relative proportions of land cover changes categorized into so called “land cover flows”. Different cities have different structure of changes.

Main benefit of EO-based land accounting is linked to its capacity to describe and quantify development of land cover classes in time. Changes could be arbitrarily categorized; either at basic level or further in-depth according to land cover (change) flows.

Structure of land cover changes are different for different cities, what they have in common is an increase of urban areas, for example urban extent of Jalalabad almost double increased, while in Karachi this expansion of urban areas is the largest in absolute figures. Together with large share of construction sites extension, Karachi confirms that it is one of the world’s megacities.