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Title
International cooperation and technology transfer
Author
Fras, Mojca Kosmatin

ISPRS Meeting of WG VI/3 and WG IV/3 in Ljubljana (SLOVENIA), 2-5 February 2000
CONTRIBUTION TO HARMONISED LAND USE STATISTICS IN EUROPE
Willibald CROI, Christophe DUHAMEL, Gerd EIDEN, Maxime KAYADJANIAN
CESD Communautaire - Land Use
3 rue Wenceslas 1 er
L - 2724 Luxembourg
Email: w.croi@cesd.lu;
Abstract
Political responsibles and decision-makers at local/regional, national and European level require harmonised
information on land use for spatial planning and policy formulation in a variety of fields e.g. agriculture, rural
development and landscape, environment, regional development, urban areas etc.
Numerous information systems on land use exist in Europe. Problems of compatibility between
systems are of crucial importance:
• Information systems or data sets are created for specific sectoral purposes (agriculture
statistics, forest resource assessment, environment-monitoring etc.). The different
'universes' are overlapping each other and land use or land cover categories are not
compatible.
• Data collection follows different approaches: exhaustive mapping vs. statistical sampling
approaches. Earth observation provides imagery covering large areas but the information
derived thereof satisfies only partly the requirements.
• Spatial restitution units are varying greatly (from census block level to national or even
European level).
• Mapping units vary depending on the scale so that geometry and content, even with the
same subject, are not compatible.
Overall objective of CESD work on land use information is to improve that situation through awareness
raising activities, methodological work and operational activities. Most of CESD land Use activities are
carried out within a general framework of technical and methodological support to Eurostat, the Statistical
Office of the European Communities.
• Discussions on conceptual problems on land use and land cover, nomenclatures, classification
systems, data integration and quality etc. are held during workshops and seminars, e.g. organised in
the framework of the LANES network, an awareness raising activity funded by the EU research
budget in 1997. The network comprised representatives from relevant European organisations, being
researchers, statisticians, data suppliers and users. Several seminars have been organised in
collaboration with Eurostat, e.g. on the potential of earth observation data in statistics in Bad
Neuenahr and Rome. An international seminar on the requirements for land use information for EU
policies, hosted by Eurostat, followed in January 1998.
• Eurostat entrusted CESD with drafting a Manual of Concepts and terminology related to land cover
and land use.
• The development of a Meta database on Information Systems On Land Use in Europe, providing
detailed information about the nomenclatures and the classification systems applied, is part of
methodological work on harmonisation. This meta database allows careful analysis of existing
information systems in Europe.
• A study on the design of a reference land use classification based on a classifiers approach was
carried out for FAO.
• Concerning operational activities, CESD is partner in Landsis g.e.i.e., a European Economic Interest
Grouping that carries out statistical activities (including land use) in line with recommendations of the
Agricultural Statistics Committee. A recent project concerning a sampling survey on agricultural land
use in Bulgaria has been implemented.
1 INTRODUCTION
Policy formulation and decision making require
harmonised information on land cover and land use
at different administrative levels. At European level
the information is required to guide and implement
several policies such as the Common Agricultural
Policy (increase competitiveness by direct payment