A lot of work is going into creating built-up areas, but the results are inconsistent. People do good work, but there is no standard method.
Once buildings have been mapped (example: much of the Nepal project #1018) built-up areas don't need to be done by hand. I used an automated tool to generate built-up areas from as small area in Nepal, and the results are at https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B79TF0JkJwBffjIybGRVd2VNVllkdGd1bFBJdzJWUzdjM3N5Q1pDYm5NbGJuNVcxRXA1UjA&usp=sharing . The polygons generated by the tool are more consistent, and have a higher density of buildings than those drawn by hand. The tool, which is part of ESRI ArcGIS Advanced, (i.e. ArcInfo), allows the user to decide the minimum number of buildings per area, and the maximum distance between buildings. If there is a large area with buildings mapped, someone with that tool or a similar tool could generate built-up areas for that entire area. This would also be good for updating built-up areas after new housing was built. I'd be happy do do some of this work. -- Dan
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