To provide high spatial resolution estimates of global urban extent derived from global 30m Landsat satellite data for the target year 2010 and a companion dataset to the Global Man-made Impervious Surface (GMIS) dataset.

To provide high spatial resolution estimates of global man-made imperviousness for the target year 2010, derived from global 30m Landsat satellite data and a companion dataset to the Global Human Built-up And Settlement Extent (HBASE) dataset.

To serve a wide user community by providing composite Landsat images and raw data for urban areas that can be used in interdisciplinary studies of remote sensing and the environment.

To preserve access to the original set of socioeconomic and natural resource scenarios used by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and other related research.