This work presents a study on the urban configuration of a number of Italian metropolitan areas and their development over time, with the aim of evaluating the size and shape of urban areas expansion. Raster data are used, produced by the European Environmental Agency within the COoRdination of INformation on the Environment land cover project. The study is based on a version of spatial entropy measures proposed and validated by a recent series of papers, aimed at the evaluation of spatial data heterogeneity; the methods assess the efficiency of the spatial configuration of urban areas. An innovative combination of two entropy measures is the tool for evaluating the urban development in Italy. Results allow both conclusive comments about each metropolitan area and comparisons across areas over space and time.

这项工作提出了一些意大利大都市地区的城市布局及其随着时间的发展的研究，目的是评估城市地区扩张的规模和形状。使用的栅格数据是由欧洲环境署在环境土地覆盖项目的信息协调中生成的。该研究基于最新版本的一系列论文提出并验证的空间熵测度，旨在评估空间数据的异质性。这些方法评估了城市空间布局的效率。两种熵测度的创新组合是评估意大利城市发展的工具。结果既可以对每个大都市地区做出结论性评论，也可以进行跨区域的时空比较。