Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development. The Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development (IÖR-Monitor) is a specialized information system on land use issues in Germany. Since 2010, it has been providing information on the land use structure and its development as well as on landscape quality in high spatial resolution for the terrestrial territory of the Federal Republic of Germany on the basis of indicators. The IOER monitor thus complements the official land use statistics and the environmental-economic accounts with basic information for assessing land development, especially with regard to its sustainability.

The Monitor of Settlement and Open Space Development is a permanent, scientific service provided free of charge by the Leibniz Institute for Ecological Spatial Development (IÖR) in Dresden and part of its research-based policy and social consulting. It therefore also bears the short name IÖR-Monitor. The monitor is successively supplemented with new time periods and indicators in order to be able to assess the state and development of land throughout Germany. For this purpose, IÖR uses the most accurate geotopographic data in Germany (ATKIS Basis-DLM) for all land use indicators, the Digital Land Cover Model (LBM-DE) for the indicators hemeroby and degree of naturalness, official house perimeters (HU-DE) and house coordinates (HK-DE) for the building indicators, as well as geospatial data (protected areas, legally defined floodplains), population grids (from the 2011 census) and statistical data (population, GDP), which are processed in combination.

Functional scope 
Almost 80 indicators of the categories settlement, open space, traffic, buildings, landscape quality (e.g. "hemeroby index", "ecotone density"), landscape and nature conservation, ecosystem services, population, risk and relief are now offered. For each indicator, the calculation methodology and meaning is presented in a fact sheet. Recurring, central terms are explained in a glossary.

The following options are available for the output of the indicators:

 Maps based on vector data with different spatial extents (municipality to federal level).
 Maps based on raster data with high spatial resolution (up to 100 meters raster width)
 Tables and development graphs for all indicators (export of table values in CSV file format)
 Individually designed maps with storage option and result dispatch by e-mail (modification of color values and number of classes possible)
 Area and time comparisons as well as statistical evaluations.
 Via an offered Web Map Service (WMS) an integration of the raster maps (100 meter raster width) into own GIS environments is possible.

Meaning 
The IÖR-Monitor provides information on the condition and development of land and soil, which is only available to a limited extent and requires protection. It serves as a basis for evaluations and is of particular importance for land budget policy and spatial and sectoral planning at all levels (federal, state, planning regions, counties and municipalities). The IÖR-Monitor can be used, for example, to display and compare variables such as land sealing, population density, transport area per inhabitant and the accessibility of urban green spaces. This information is also of interest to science, business, interested private users and the media and can be accessed on the Internet at any time. In the 3rd Geo Progress Report of the Federal Government, the IOER monitor is cited as an "excellent example of open government". Furthermore, Germany is classified as a European leader in the survey and monitoring of the land use structure based on the analysis results of the monitor. After being selected by a jury, the IÖR monitor was able to present itself to a broad public as a service for responsible future design at the Week of the Environment (2016).

By providing information on settlement and transport land development, the IÖR-Monitor contributes to the national sustainability strategy of 2002, in which the German government set the goal of reducing land consumption by settlement and transport uses in Germany to 30 hectares per day by 2020 (30-hectare target). Accurate and up-to-date land monitoring is needed to evaluate the achievement of this target.

References 

Information systems
Nature conservation in Germany
Urban planning in Germany
Settlement geography