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Territorial Units

Antoine Iba Halin edited this page Apr 15, 2021 · 4 revisions

What is a territorial unit?

It is a subdivision of country. Territorial units come in extremely various size, shapes and political weight, thus making cross-national comparaison hard (For example, are Indian states and German landers equivalent territorial units ? Could one comprae state CO2 emmission with lander emmission ?). They also tend to change over time (2014 Frech regions redrawn, 2011 Soudan and South Sudan split, etc.) wich makes historical comparission even harder, if not impossible.

If possible, one should prefer using non-territorialize data (like a grid) and agregate it by one's territorial unit frame of choice instead of using data already aggregated by territory, as it prevents aggregation errors and eases historical and cross-border comparassion.

What are NUTS ?

The NUTS classification (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) is a hierarchical system for dividing up the economic territory of the EU and the UK for the purpose of collection, development and harmonisation of European regional statistics and for cross-border socio-economic analyses.

It uses already existing territorial units (French regions and departements, German landers, Romanian Counties, Belgium provinces, etc.) and groups them into 3 nomenclatures, so that each territorial unit is socio-economically and demographically equivalent to every other one. Full list is available here, and GIS files here

References

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/background