Wildfires - Cities and FUAs

This dataset provides indicators of population and land exposure to wildfires.

Data sources and methodology

The indicators use the JRC's Global wildfire dataset of fire regimes and fire behaviours (Artés, T. et al., 2019), providing monthly individual fire perimeters for 2000-2023. Burnt areas are aggregated by year to obtain the total burnt land for each year. Built-up area exposure to wildfire is computed by intersecting the total burnt area with Copernius annual land cover data (Copernicus Climate Change Service, Climate Data Store, 2019). For population exposure, a 5-km buffer was added to the wildfire perimeters before intersecting with the Global Human Settlement Population layer (European Commission, GHSL Data Package 2023).

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 definition identifies 1 285 FUAs and 1 402 cities in all OECD member countries except Costa Rica and three accession countries.

Cite this dataset

OECD Regions, cities and local areas database (Wildfires - 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]