International Journal of Geo-Information Article Automatic Delineation of Urban Growth Boundaries Based on Topographic Data Using Germany as a Case Study Oliver Harig 1,* , Robert Hecht 1 , Dirk Burghardt 2 and Gotthard Meinel 1 1 Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden, Germany;
[email protected] (R.H.);
[email protected] (G.M.) 2 Institute for Cartography, Technische Universität Dresden, 01076 Dresden, Germany;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +49-(0)351-46-79-0; Fax: +49-(0)351-46-79-212 Abstract: Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) is a growth management policy that designates specific areas where growth should be concentrated in order to avoid urban sprawl. The objective of such a boundary is to protect agricultural land, open spaces and the natural environment, as well as to use existing infrastructure and public services more efficiently. Due to the inherent heterogeneity and complexity of settlements, UGBs in Germany are currently created manually by experts. Therefore, every dataset is linked to a specific area, investigation period and dedicated use. Clearly, up-to- date, homogeneous, meaningful and cost-efficient delineations created automatically are needed to avoid this reliance on manually or semi-automatically generated delineations. Here, we present an Citation: Harig, O.; Hecht, R.; aggregative method to produce UGBs using building footprints and generally available topographic Burghardt, D.; Meinel, G. Automatic data as inputs. It was applied to study areas in Frankfurt/Main, the Hanover region and rural Delineation of Urban Growth Boundaries Based on Topographic Brandenburg while taking full account of Germany’s planning and legal framework for spatial Data Using Germany as a Case Study.