Agglomérations morphologiques et fonctionnelles, l’apport de la télédétection urbaine

This paper deals with the abilities of remote sensing to delineate the so-called urban morphological agglomeration as defined by Van der Haegen for the Belgian Statistical Institute (I.N.S.-N.S.I.). The continuity of the built-up area is obtained by the processing of a classified satellite image according to mathematical morphology filtering. The adaptation of the agglomeration to the boundaries of the communes, constituting the operational agglomeration, requires the handling of raster and vector geographical data as well as population figures in a geographical information system. The proposed methodology is applied to the region of Liège (Belgium).