Stats in the city : the GHSL urban centre database 2025 : public release GHS-UCDB R2024

The Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) project produces new global spatial information, evidence-based analytics and knowledge describing the human presence on Earth. It operates in a fully open and free data and methods access policy. 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. GHSL data continue to support the GEO Human Planet Initiative that is committed to developing a new generation of measurements and information products providing new scientific evidence and a comprehensive understanding of the human presence on the planet and that can support global policy processes with agreed, actionable and goal-driven metrics. This document describes the public release of the GHSL Urban Centre Database 2025 (GHS P2024). This release is based on the GHSL Data Package 2023, the Degree of Urbanisation to delineate spatial entities, and geospatial data integration from a variety of open source datasets to characterise them. The result is the most complete information system on cities to date with data for 11,422 quality controlled urban centres across 15 thematic domains, 63 indicator groups, 473 indicators, and 2602 attributes. The UCDB has two data streams, one based on the fixed delineation of the 2025 boundaries, the other based on a multi-temporal delineation of entities and their tracking over time. The UCDB integrates data from Copernicus Services (including Emergency, Land Monitoring, Marine and Climate), peer-reviewed datasets (i.e. from the scientific literature), and institutional information systems (i.e. from the United Nations). This document serves as a documentation to the dataset and includes indicator fact sheets to navigate the database.