Built-Up Areas in India (e-GEOPOLIS)

Objectives

e-Geopolis (whole project)

The objective of the project is to valorise a systematic corpus of statisitical datas relative to the dynamic of the urban growth of the Planet. The project is contextualized with the use of 2 big existing databases: Geopolis and Archives Terrae Statisticae (ATS):

• Geopolis is from now on the only existing scientific database on worldwide built-up areas: it lists about 50 000 built-up areas and gives the evolution of their population on the longest possible period of the History.
• ATS archives are the result of an association (1901 French law) which has the objective of putting geographic coordinates and of digitize statistical datas for each local population unit (town, village, commune, parish …), from all the existing modern census (1790 – now) for each country of the world.

The e-Geopolis project aims at merging these two databases, completing and updating them, setting up the informatic structure with a view to an “intelligent” scientific valorization which comprises the whole knowledge chain, from sources archiving to research results dissemination, not to mention the methodological transparency, the definitions building and the on-line publication of tables, indexes and maps.

Complementary data acquisition is a compulsory activity for the program cohesion. SEDET laboratory, the project pilot, is currently the only one to gather the necessary data capital to the realization of such a project than e-Geopolis.

e-Geopolis India

The database particularly deals with one of the world demographic giants, India (one sixth of World population). The project has the support of French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) and of its geomatic department (LIAG).

Since the economical liberalisation, started fifteen years back, India is facing an important economical growth between 6 and 9% yearly. This fast economic growth is on-going together with a fast growth of urban population, that could turn 473 millions people in 2021 (Government of India). But it is also on-going with the transformation of thousands of villages that don’t appear in the “official” urban category, despite their size and their character less and less agricultural. So, for example, in 2001 census, the number of “villages” of more than 10 000 inhabitants was higher than the number of “cities”.

India has one of the best statistical coverage existing in Southern countries, by its quality, its fine spatial resolution (622 000 towns and villages, almost 4 000 towns) and by its historical background (first census is from 1872).

Paradoxally, India still has no geographic information system for mapping populating dynamics at the local populating unit level. So, and whether outstanding monographies exist on Indian megalopolis, on some middle-size cities or even some regions, there is until now no way for studying systematically the evolution of the Indian population system.

Materials and Methods

The team of the project e-Geopolis capitalizes about 80% of existing historic géo-statistico information on the evolution of the population of the human built-up areas (ULP) of the whole Planet, material from which is extracted the numbers of population of the agglomerations.

e-Geopolis has for vocation to become the world reference concerning historic and geographical information on the evolution of the population of the agglomerations of more than 10 000. The strong point of the project resides in the international methodology adopted to delimit the urban space. Indeed, every country of the World adopted a specific definition of the urban area, so that, on a scientific point of view, the urban statistics are not comparable on an international scale. The agglomerations of Geopolis are defined on the contrary according to the same statistical criterias. Whatever is the official national definition of the urban: a Geopolis agglomeration is a space built in continuous where leave at least 10 000 inhabitants. This methodology gave its proofs since more of 15 years: the data of Geopolis served references to innumerable researches and publications.

The Indiapolis project, localized to the IFP (LIAG), constitutes the institutional and technical relay of the Asian part of the project. It enhances an unique statistical heritage in the southern countries, composed by 14 censuses of the population (census) done from 1872 to 2001.

The first phase (2008-2009) will consist in:
  a. georeferencing the 6 000 towns, urban areas and villages of more than 10 000 inhabitants currently existing (census 2001)
  b. gathering to this level the data of the census of 1872 to 2001
  c. pursuing the experience of the SIPIS project in the same way, started at IFP by C.Z. Guilmoto (1998), by mapping census data to the village level in Tamil Nadu. The second phase (2010-2011) will consist in spreading the principle of the exhaustive cartography of the population in the set of the cities and villages of India, and to prepare the actualization of the census of 2011.

Partners

• Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
• Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot
• Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP)
• UMR Ades-Tempos (CNRS/Bordeaux III)
• Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED)
• Université de Bourgogne
• Mount Holyoke College, USA
• Université de Lancaster, UK
• Université de Lleida, Espagne
• Université de Molise, Italie

Fundings

• Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), France
• Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot
• Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP)
• Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED)
• Université de Bourgogne

Team

• François Moriconi-Ebrard, Geography, Sociétés En Développement dans l’Espace et dans le Temps (SEDET) - CNRS, Université Paris 7 Denis Diderot, FRANCE
• Frédéric Borne, Geomatics, Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) - INDE, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de la France
• Kamala Marius-Gnanou, Geography, Université Bordeaux III, FRANCE
• Subramanian VENKATA, Statistics, Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) - INDE, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de la France
• G. Muthu SANKAR, Geomatics, Institut Français de Pondichéry (IFP) - INDE, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères de la France
• Valérie Golaz, Demography, Centre d’Etude pour la Population et le Développement (CEPED), INED, FRANCE
• Thomas Thévenin, Geography, Théoriser et Modéliser pour Aménager (TheMA), Université de Bourgogne, FRANCE
• Hervé Gazel, Geomatics, Association Entre Nous Et Vous (ENEV), FRANCE

Expected results

The global project first allows to take stock on the existing documentary resources for the human sciences in the domain of the knowledge of the fine spatial distribution of the populations. The CEPED (in Paris) and the IFP has thus for mission to mark and to keep the documents of which some are rare or even threatened with disappearance.

On a descriptive level, e-geopolis has then for ambition to continue to be a reference in the improvement of the knowledge of the big indicators of the urbanization: population of the cities and agglomerations, rate of urbanization, growth rate, urban hierarchies, etc.

The exploitation of a homogeneous corpus that describes a systematic statistical universe also permits to optimize the experimental approach, opening new horizons thus to the theoretical and fundamental research, by the validation of models and known laws or by the discovery of regularities until then unknown.

This project will also contribute to structure the scientific community around an epistemologic approach that consists from the scientific survey of the facts to better seize the conditions of application and setting in work of the theoretical devices. This approach implies a sharing and a diffusion of the tools of knowledge and the methods of analysis.