PEAK Impacts | Forecasting urban growth and water consumption in Colombia and beyond

Developing new models for predicting urban growth

Understanding the changing footprint of urban areas is vital to those planning future infrastructure and services. It can be particularly challenging in low- and middle-income countries where resources are scarce, and change happens quickly and often in unexpected ways.

New easy-to-use models are enabling planners to predict changes in the size and density of urban areas and build this into decision making. The models run on open access information and can be used in any context, offering the potential to transform urban planning to help create the compact, sustainable cities of the future.