New Perspectives for Mapping Global Population Distribution Using World Settlement Footprint Products

Daniela Palacios-Lopez, Felix Bachofer, Thomas Esch, Wieke Heldens, Andreas Hirner, Mattia Marconcini, Alessandro Sorichetta, Julian Zeidler, Claudia Kuenzer, Stefan Dech, Andrew J. Tatem and Peter Reinartz
Additional contact information
Daniela Palacios-Lopez: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Felix Bachofer: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Thomas Esch: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Wieke Heldens: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Andreas Hirner: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Mattia Marconcini: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Alessandro Sorichetta: WorldPop, Department Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1B, UK
Julian Zeidler: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Claudia Kuenzer: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Stefan Dech: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany
Andrew J. Tatem: WorldPop, Department Geography and Environment, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1B, UK
Peter Reinartz: German Aerospace Center (DLR), German Remote Sensing Data Center (DFD), Oberpfaffenhofen, D-82234 Wessling, Germany

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 21, 1-24

Abstract: In the production of gridded population maps, remotely sensed, human settlement datasets rank among the most important geographical factors to estimate population densities and distributions at regional and global scales. Within this context, the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has developed a new suite of global layers, which accurately describe the built-up environment and its characteristics at high spatial resolution: (i) the World Settlement Footprint 2015 layer (WSF-2015), a binary settlement mask; and (ii) the experimental World Settlement Footprint Density 2015 layer (WSF-2015-Density), representing the percentage of impervious surface. This research systematically compares the effectiveness of both layers for producing population distribution maps through a dasymetric mapping approach in nine low-, middle-, and highly urbanised countries. Results indicate that the WSF-2015-Density layer can produce population distribution maps with higher qualitative and quantitative accuracies in comparison to the already established binary approach, especially in those countries where a good percentage of building structures have been identified within the rural areas. Moreover, our results suggest that population distribution accuracies could substantially improve through the dynamic preselection of the input layers and the correct parameterisation of the Settlement Size Complexity (SSC) index.

Keywords: global population distribution mapping; World Settlement Footprint; percent impervious surface; dasymetric mapping; Settlement Size Complexity Index (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/6056/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/21/6056/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:21:p:6056-:d:282175

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().