Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version 1 (GRUMPv1): Urban Extents Grid

The Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project, Version 1 (GRUMPv1): Urban Extents Grid distinguishes urban and rural areas based on a combination of population counts (persons), settlement points, and the presence of Nighttime Lights. Areas are defined as urban where contiguous lighted cells from the Nighttime Lights or approximated urban extents based on buffered settlement points for which the total population is greater than 5,000 persons. This data set is produced by the Columbia University Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) in collaboration with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), The World Bank, and Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT).
To provide a raster representation of urban areas (or urban mask) for use with GRUMP population grids or other data sets.