Drought - Cities and FUAs

This dataset provides regional statistics on estimate of soil moisture anomaly, in Functional Urban Areas (FUAs) and Cities.

Data sources and methodology

Drought is defined by the soil moisture change compared to the reference period 1981-2010. The soil moisture refers to the volume of water in the first soil layer (0 to 7 cm). This indicator is based on Copernicus ERA5-Land. ERA5-Land is used as it provides harmonised, globally consistent coverage at fine spatial resolution (0.1 degree), enabling the production of comparable subnational indicators also where national meteorological data are not available at the required scale. These estimates may differ from official subnational climate statistics due to differences in methodological approaches, such as the use of reanalysis based top down modelling versus in situ observations, along with variations in input data sources, spatial resolution, and the models and algorithms used to generate temperature estimates.

These estimates may differ from official subnational climate statistics due to differences in methodological approaches, such as the use of reanalysis based top down modelling versus in situ observations, along with variations in input data sources, spatial resolution, and the models and algorithms used to generate temperature estimates.

Defining FUAs and cities

The OECD, in cooperation with the EU, has developed a harmonised definition of functional urban areas (FUAs) to capture the economic and functional reach of cities based on daily commuting patterns (OECD, 2012). FUAs consist of:

1. A city – defined by urban centres in the degree of urbanisation, adapted to the closest local administrative units to define a city.


2. A commuting zone – including all local areas where at least 15% of employed residents work in the city.

The delineation process includes:

• Assigning municipalities surrounded by a single FUA to that FUA.


• Excluding non-contiguous municipalities.

The correspondence table between SAUs and FUAs/cities is available in parquet and csv format.
The definition identifies 1 272 FUAs and 1 269 cities in all OECD member countries except Costa Rica and three accession countries.

Cite this dataset

OECD Regions, cities and local areas database (Drought - Cities and FUAs), http://oe.cd/geostats

Further information

• OECD Local Data Portal


• OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance

For questions and/or comments, please email [email protected]