High-resolution gridded population datasets for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2010, 2015, and 2020

Abstract

The Latin America and the Caribbean region is one of the most urbanized regions in the world, with a total population of around 630 million that is expected to increase by 25% by 2050. In this context, detailed and contemporary datasets accurately describing the distribution of residential population in the region are required for measuring the impacts of population growth, monitoring changes, supporting environmental and health applications, and planning interventions. To support these needs, an open access archive of high-resolution gridded population datasets was created through disaggregation of the most recent official population count data available for 28 countries located in the region. These datasets are described here along with the approach and methods used to create and validate them. For each country, population distribution datasets, having a resolution of 3 arc seconds (approximately 100 m at the equator), were produced for the population count year, as well as for 2010, 2015, and 2020. All these products are available both through the WorldPop Project website and the WorldPop Dataverse Repository.

Model-based projections of Zika virus infections in childbearing women in the Americas

“…To estimate the annual numbers of pregnancies per 1 km × 1 km grid cell in 2015, methods developed by the WorldPop project (www.worldpop.org) 25,31 were adapted for the Americas region. High-resolution estimates of population counts per 100 m × 100 m grid cell for 2015 were recently constructed for Latin American, Asian and African countries 14,32 . With consistent subnational data on sex and age structures, as well as subnational age-specific fertility rate data across the Americas currently unavailable for fully replicating the approaches of Tatem and colleagues 31 , national-level adjustments were made to construct pregnancy and birth counts.…”

“…To quantify the potential magnitude of the ongoing Zika epidemic in terms of people who realistically might become infected, we formulated and applied a method for projecting location-specific epidemic attack rates on highly spatially resolved human demographic projections 14 . The central concept behind our approach is that of the 'first-wave' epidemic.…”

“…In conclusion, our model-based approach offers a unique way to leverage a variety of spatially detailed data products 7,14,27,28 to make a priori projections of attack rates and infections that could be experienced in the first wave of the ongoing Zika epidemic. Projections such as these have an important role to play in the early stages of an epidemic, when planning for surveillance and outbreak response is actively under way both internationally and locally 9 .…”

Reviews of Geospatial Information Technology and Collaborative Data Delivery for Disaster Risk Management

“…While population data is organized by administrative unit or census district, spatially more detailed data is needed for better planning of disaster risk management [41,92,93]. For the needs, grid-based global population data, such as Gridded Population of the World [94], Landcan [95], and WorldPop [96], was developed by using existing census data and ancillary geospatial data, such as land cover maps, road network data, terrain data, and night-time light satellite images.…”

Global population distributions and the environment : discerning observed global and regional patterns.

“…Data input to a RF model varies on a country-by-country basis with highresolution country specific datasets being used over coarser resolution default datasets when available. Typical ancillary datasets include land cover, elevation, transportation network, climatological, hydrological, and settlement data (Gaughan et al 2013;Stevens et al 2015;Sorichetta et al 2015). All input data is projected, rasterized (if applicable) and resampled to 100m, using techniques appropriate for the given dataset .…”