Revised calibration of the 2UP model; analysing change and regional variation

The 2UP model was developed by PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency for spatially explicit simulation of the future growth of cities and population at a global scale (van Huijstee et al., 2018). The model describes urban land use and population at a fine 30” spatial resolution equivalent to approximately 1x1km near the equator. The model combines scenario-based projections of urban area and population development with local suitability constraints to generate future urban area and population grids. The local suitability for urban development is dynamically generated according to a parameterized suitability model. An initial version of the suitability model was calibrated using logistic regression analysis explaining the global 2014 urban land-use patterns with a limited set of spatially explicit data sets (Andrée and Koomen, 2017). As a follow-up, the current report documents several efforts to improve that initial calibration.