Functional Urban Areas and Regions in Europe

Programme 2014 - 2020 ESPON 2020

Date of latest update: 2025-08-23

Description

Description (EN):

The main outcome of this service contract will be an updated version of the ESPON OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cube which was developed during the ESPON M4D project (2013) and a practical and communicative web tool integrating the new ESPON OLAP cube functionalities. Both tools will allow to disaggregate NUTS 3 and other data at a lower scale, thus providing an opportunity to benchmark and analyse data on the current situation and recent trends in functional urban areas and other functional regions in Europe. In addition, the web tool will provide a range of analysis functionalities, for instance benchmarking possibilities via mapping, charts and graphs.In order to improve the relevance, efficiency and effectiveness of the policy making and implementation process regarding functional urban areas and other functional regions, it is essential to have data, indicators and analysis tools that can help to better understand the drivers for growth and inclusive social development in these areas across Europe. By now significant data gaps exist to be able to understand their contribution to polycentric and balanced territorial development. This project will fill the existing data gaps, complement the work of Eurostat, OECD and DG Joint Research Center in this field and will facilitate policy debates at various levels, for instance within Urban Agenda for the EU Partnership on Sustainable Use of Land.

Achievements (EN):

The ESPON FUORE web tool provides hundreds of estimated demographic and socio-economic time series indicators for several types of functional areas. The web tool allows to quickly analyse and benchmark any of the functional areas by means of interactive maps and charts. The estimation is based on disaggregation of NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 indicators to 1X1 km grids by means of different ancillary datasets, such as the European Settlement Map and Corine Land Cover Refined, following the “dasymetric mapping” method. The downscaled indicators are eventually aggregated back from 1X1 km grid to the different functional areas. The FUORE tool contains nine pre-defined functional areas which have been established by the European Commission and various ESPON research projects. The list is by no means exhaustive and has been selected based on territorial coverage and availability of clear geometries that can be consistently applied over counties covered by the ESPON program. The demographic and socio-economic NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 indicators used for estimations come from ESPON 2020 Database and will be regularly updated. However, an integrated Custom Disaggregation Tool allows registered users to easily run the disaggregation-aggregation algorithm themselves. The tool allows to upload any user-selected NUTS-based indicator and estimate it by the functional area included in the FUORE tool. Currently, it is not possible to add user-generated customized functional areas. The ESPON FUORE webtool is an outcome of the ESPON 2020 project “Functional Urban Areas and Regions in Europe”. It is built on a previous research carried out during the ESPON 2013 Multi Dimensional Database Design and Development (M4D) project which developed several OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) cubes to estimate NUTS based indicators at different spatial scales.

Website: https://archive.espon.eu/

Expected Results (EN):

The activity will be mainly directed towards developing tools to benchmark and analyse data on the current situation and recent trends in functional urban areas (as defined by the Eurostat and OECD) and other functional regions in Europe (like local labour market areas, etc.) using a set of indicators. As a harmonized EU-OECD functional urban area definition exists and Eurostat is working on methods how to establish comparable labour market areas across the EU, this activity will not focus on research to establish new (improved) functional delineations. Instead it is foreseen as mainly a data gathering, developing and benchmarking exercise. Thus, to support this activity tools shall be developed. It is foreseen that an updated version of the ESPON OLAP cube could be used to develop a comparable data set and fill in the missing data using estimations. Updates may concern a new improved methodology on how to disaggregate NUTS 3 data and other data, as well integration of the newest population grid data in the OLAP cube. The updated ESPON OLAP cube shall later be developed as a practical and communicative web tool integrating the ESPON OLAP cube functionalities. Such activity will be in line with the current Eurostat efforts to intensify work on experimental statistics11 by using new (non-standard) data sources and estimation methods to obtain data at different spatial levels or on themes where standard official data approaches do not work so well. It will also complement Eurostat’s work on small area estimations. The objective of the activity is to also benefit from the previous ESPON studies which involved data gathering activities with collected data potentially being and other functional regions: a) ESPON GEOSPECS project b) ESPON project “Harmonised Datasets on Local Units (LAU 2)” which developed harmonized database at LAU level 2 with data for EU28+4 and looked into variations in the way in which data are defined and collected together with how this affects the quality and completeness of pan-European data.

Thematic information

Urban development Evaluation systems and results

Specific Objective: Improved territorial observation and tools for territorial analyses

Thematic Objective:

(11) enhancing institutional capacity of public authorities and stakeholders and efficient public administration through actions to strengthen the institutional capacity and the efficiency of public administrations and public services related to the implementation of the ERDF, and in support of actions under the ESF to strengthen the institutional capacity and the efficiency of public administration.

Investment Priority: (11 ETC) ETC specific for transnational cooperation: enhancing institutional capacity of public authorities and stakeholders and efficient public administration by developing and coordinating macro-regional and sea-basin strategies

Partners (5)

Lead Partner: Autonomous University of Barcelona

Address: Bellaterra, Campus Universitari s/n, 8193 Barelona, Spain

Legal status: public

University of Geneva

Name: University of Geneva

Address: 24 rue du Général Dufour CH, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland

Legal status: public

GISAT

Name: GISAT

Address: Milady Horakove 57, 170 00 Praha, Czech Republic

Legal status: private

Randbee

Name: Randbee

Address: Calle Martínez Campos 16, 29001 Málaga, Spain

Legal status: private

MCRIT S.L.

Name: MCRIT S.L.

Address: Salvador Espriu n.83 local 4, ES08005 Barcelona, Spain

Legal status: private

Partners map

Lead partner

Project partner

Summary

Project name (EN): Functional Urban Areas and Regions in Europe

Project acronym: FUORE

Project start date: 2018-08-21

Project end date: 2020-09-29

Project status: closed

Total budget/expenditure: EUR 364 520.00

Total EU funding (amount): EUR 298 069.46

Co-financing sources:

ERDF: Amount, EUR 298 069.46.

Documents

Documents on this project are listed below, and organised by category. Please note field "Data source", attached to each document. Keep.eu users are free to use these documents as long as they mention the data source and keep.eu.

Videos / films

Roger Milego: A tool to estimate indicators by functional areas

Attachment type: link

Type of document: Video / film

Data source: https://www.espon.eu/functional-urban-areas-tool

Publication date: 2021-02-23

Document date: 2019-07-01

Languages: en

Reports

Monitoring and Tools - Final Report

Attachment type: file

Type of document: Report

Data source: https://www.espon.eu/functional-urban-areas-tool

Publication date: 2021-02-23

Document date: 2020-07-10

Languages: en

Attachment file: Download

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

Financing programme

2014 - 2020 ESPON 2020

Last month that data in keep.eu was retrieved from the Programme's website or received from the Programme

2024-03-04

No. of projects in keep.eu / Total no. of projects (% of projects in keep.eu)

68 / 69 (98.55%)

No. of project partnerships in keep.eu / Total no. of project partnerships (% of project partnerships in keep.eu)

353 / 370 (95.41%)

Notes on the data

Information provided by the Programme. Data from 3 projects ((MRS. ESPON TOOL, SoET and CPS 2.0) was retrieved by Interact from the programme´s website on the 2024-03-01. Regarding partners only data only main partners is available. Achievements were retrieved by Interact from the Programme website (http://www.espon.eu), or a website directly linked from it, on 2021-09-21 and 2023-01-03.

Languages

Contact Form

Functional Urban Areas and Regions in Europe

Description

Thematic information

Partners (5)

Partners map

Summary

Documents

Information regarding the data in keep.eu on the programme financing this project

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