Indicator s for Built-up Area Monitorin g – a Case Study of the Czech Republic and the EU

The present research is focused on built-up area (BUA) monitoring. The continental landscape is becoming a limited resource in today’s world, much the same as some materials and energy resources. The goal was to design simple indicators that are compatible with environmental indicators used in the analysis of material and energy flows. We have consequently proposed the indicators BUA per person and gross domestic product (GDP) demands for total BUA. We have used these indicators to evaluate the development in the Czech Republic and the situation in the EU-27 countries. The development in the Czech Republic shows a moderately smooth decrease in the BUA per person indicator value. The GDP demands for BUA indicator showed that the cessation of economic growth after 2008 slowed the process of decoupling of GDP from the BUA. Despite the low GDP in the Czech Republic, the indicator GDP demands for BUA attains lower values than for Austria or Belgium.