Improving the accuracy of gridded population estimates in cities and slums to monitor SDG 11: Evidence from a simulation study in Namibia

Dana R. Thomson, Forrest R. Stevens, Robert Chen, Gregory Yetman, Alessandro Sorichetta and Andrea E. Gaughan

Land Use Policy, 2022, vol. 123, issue C

Abstract: People living in slums and other deprived areas in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) cities are under-represented in censuses, and subsequently in "top-down" census-derived gridded population estimates. Modelled gridded population data are a unique source of disaggregated population information to calculate local development indicators such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study evaluates if, and how, “top-down” WorldPop Global (WPG) Unconstrained and Constrained datasets might be improved in a simulated LMIC urban population by incorporating slum population counts into model training. We found that the WPG-Unconstrained model, with or without slum training data, underestimated population in urban deprived areas while overestimating population in rural areas. The percent of population living in slums (SDG 11.1.1), for example, was estimated to be 20% or less compared to a "true" value of 29.5%. The WPG-Constrained model, which included building footprint auxiliary datasets, far more accurately estimated the population in all grid cells (including rural areas), and the inclusion of slum training data further improved estimates such that SDG 11.1.1 was estimated at 27.1% and 27.0%, respectively. Inclusion of building metrics and slum population training data in “top-down” gridded population models can substantially improve grid cell-level accuracy in both urban and rural areas.

Keywords: Population model; Low and Middle Income Countries; Deprived areas; Informal settlements; Urban poverty mapping; Global South (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837722004197
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:lauspo:v:123:y:2022:i:c:s0264837722004197

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2022.106392

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().