Aplicaciones de los índices de fragmentación de los usos del suelo para caracterizar la expansión urbana

The growing number of people living in urban areas implies the need for more sustainable landscape management. The analysis and monitorization of urban areas allows for the quantification and characterization of urban sprawl processes. Currently, new geospatial and statistical databases are being developed in Europe (Urban Atlas and Urban Audit) with up-to-date and homogeneous information on urban areas, easing its comparison and monitorization, as well as the development of tools for computing urban fragmentation metrics by means of these data, such as IndiFrag. In this work, three applications of fragmentation metrics in multiple scales are presented. Firstly, an intra-urban analysis has been conducted by municipalities in Rome in two dates. Secondly, a massive analysis, comparing at the inter-urban level the fragmentation degree for one date and their growth patterns in a sample of 68 European urban areas. Finally, multiple regression models were tested to explore the prediction of socio-economic variables using the fragmentation metrics of the 68 urban areas. The outcomes show that fragmentation metrics for the analysis of morphology, composition, and urban growth, allow for quantifying urban sprawl patterns at intra- and inter-urban levels, facilitating its relation with socioeconomic variables.