gisco_get_lau: Local Administrative Units (LAU) dataset

In giscoR: Download 'Eurostat' 'GISCO' Spatial Data

Local Administrative Units (LAU) dataset

Description

Local Administrative Units are the building blocks of NUTS and other statistical regions. They comprise municipalities and communes in the European Statistical System. See gisco_get_communes() for the separate commune dataset.

Usage

gisco_get_lau(
  year = 2024,
  epsg = 4326,
  cache = deprecated(),
  update_cache = FALSE,
  cache_dir = NULL,
  verbose = FALSE,
  country = NULL,
  gisco_id = NULL,
  ext = "gpkg"
)

Arguments

year	A character string or numeric value with the release year of the file. One of \Sexpr[stage=render,results=rd]{giscoR:::db_values("lau", "year",TRUE)}.
epsg	A character string or numeric value with the coordinate reference system as a 4-digit EPSG code. One of: "4326": WGS84. "3035": ETRS89 / ETRS-LAEA. "3857": Pseudo-Mercator.
cache	. Always caches the result due to its size. See the Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
update_cache	A logical value indicating whether to refresh the cached file. Defaults to FALSE. When set to TRUE, it forces a new download.
cache_dir	A character string with a path to a cache directory. See the Caching strategies section in gisco_set_cache_dir().
verbose	A logical value indicating whether to display informational messages.
country	A character vector of country codes. It can be either a vector of country names, a vector of ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country codes or a vector of Eurostat country codes. See also countrycode::countrycode().
gisco_id	An optional character vector of GISCO_ID LAU values.
ext	A character string with the extension of the file (default "gpkg"). One of \Sexpr[stage=render,results=rd]{giscoR:::db_values("lau", "ext",TRUE)}.

Details

The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) and the LAU nomenclature are hierarchical classifications of statistical regions that together subdivide the EU economic territory into statistical regions and local units, moving from larger to smaller territorial units: NUTS 1, 2 and 3 and LAU.

The LAU classification is not covered by any legislative act. Geographical extent covers the European Union, EFTA countries and candidate countries. The scale of the dataset is 1:100 000.

The data contain the National Statistical Agency LAU code, which can be joined to LAU lists. They also contain a GISCO_ID field, which is a unique identifier consisting of the country code and LAU code.

Total resident population figures (31 December) have also been added in some versions based on the associated LAU lists.

Value

An sf object.

Copyright

See the GISCO statistical unit copyright provisions: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/statistical-units.

Note

Check the download and usage provisions in gisco_attributions().

Source

GISCO Local Administrative Units distribution API: https://gisco-services.ec.europa.eu/distribution/v2/lau/.

See Also

gisco_get_communes().

See gisco_bulk_download() to perform a bulk download of datasets.

See gisco_id_api_lau() to download via the GISCO ID service API.

Statistical unit datasets: gisco_get_census(), gisco_get_coastal_lines(), gisco_get_nuts(), gisco_get_urban_audit()

Examples

## Not run: 

lu_lau <- gisco_get_lau(year = 2024, country = "Luxembourg")

if (!is.null(lu_lau) && requireNamespace("ggplot2", quietly = TRUE)) {
  library(ggplot2)

  ggplot(lu_lau) +
    geom_sf(aes(fill = POP_DENS_2024)) +
    labs(
      title = "Population density in Luxembourg",
      subtitle = "Year 2024",
      caption = gisco_attributions()
    ) +
    scale_fill_viridis_b(
      option = "cividis",
      label = \(x) prettyNum(x, big.mark = ",")
    ) +
    theme_void() +
    labs(fill = "pop/km2")
}

## End(Not run)

giscoR documentation built on Oct. 1, 2026, 5:13 p.m.