DEE - Indicative Australian Urban Development Risk Model (Polygon) 2016-2026

The Indicative Australian Urban Development Risk Model (2019) predicts the risk of urban expansion for the decade 2016-2026, at a 250m cell size. It is based on extrapolating identifiable trends from 2006-2016, stratified within Australia’s 109 Significant Urban Areas and eight Greater Capital City Statistical Areas (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2016). It has been developed, as an experimental dataset, by the Environmental Resources Information Network (ERIN), in the Commonwealth Department of the Environment and Energy, with the intent of aiding assessment of threat exposure for threatened species. Four parameters logically correlated with urban development were identified, assessed and extrapolated as individual risk values. These were then combined with equal weights in an index. Index values for all grid cells were classified into five risk classes and mapped in a spatial model which also integrates Protected Areas (minimal risk) and existing urban areas, for completeness. The model is restricted to Australia’s 109 Significant Urban Areas and eight Greater Capital City Statistical Areas.

The indicative Australian Urban Development Risk Model is based on an assumption that recent-past trends in urban expansion (i.e the transition from non-urban land use to urban land use) will continue linearly, and that parameters associated with past expansion are valid predictors of future expansion.

The model is underpinned by a conceptual logic, derived within ERIN, based on known datasets and their reasonable association with patterns of urbanisation. Specifically, ERIN predicts a higher urban development risk for non-urban locations with:

• proximity to existing high urban development areas

• high increasing trend in street address density

• land uses evidently prone to urbanisation and

• attractive geomorphology.

For more detailed information please read the Department of Energy and Environments Find Environmental Data site.