Large-scale land use - IGN and Cerema

The GE SCO is a reference database for the description of land cover of the entire metropolitan territory and the overseas departments and regions (DROM). It is produced from aerial shots, existing data extracted from IGN databases, and any other mobilizable data from national or local repositories.

By 2025, the new generation GE SCO – financed by the Directorate-General for Planning, Housing and Nature (DGALN) of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Territorial Cohesion – will offer complete coverage of the national territory in at least two vintages. It is a core data layer, which can be enriched if necessary at refined thematic levels to take into account local specificities and respond to specific needs.

This database will be crucial for monitoring artificialisation and achieving net zero artificialisation by 2050, as set out in the ‘Climate and Resilience’ law of 22 August 2021. Further information is available on the Artificialisation Portal.