Context

Understanding the number of people living in a given geographic area is crucial for planning public health interventions. For example, inaccurate estimates of target populations for a vaccination program can result in resource shortage, waste of supplies or even campaign failure.  

Conducting a full census is time consuming and logistically difficult, especially in rural and sparsely populated or conflict affected areas. As a result, public health interventions may rely on population estimates projected from incomplete and outdated census data.

Recent demographic surveys conducted for specific interventions might be more up-to-date, but are limited to specific geographic areas. The challenge is to use all recently available data to improve a population estimate for the larger region.

Objectives

• Represent official population estimates in 100-meter resolution geospatial layers
• Create new estimates which are extrapolated from more recent, targeted demographic survey data
• Rapidly refresh estimates as new data becomes available to support public health planning