About

The POPGRID Data Collaborative is a consortium of data producers, data users, donors, and other stakeholders that seeks to:

  1. facilitate collaboration among data producers;
  2. inform users so that they can choose the data most suited to their needs;
  3. work with users and donors to identify and prioritize data needs; and
  4. promote collaboration on data validation, documentation, and access initiatives.

POPGRID has been supported by seed funding from the Columbia University Earth Institute's Cross-Cutting Initiatives and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is an element of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Human Planet Initiative (HPI) and is exploring linkages with key sustainable development data organizations and networks.

The following data producers are currently active in POPGRID:

  • Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Earth Institute at Columbia University (POPGRID coordinator) - Producers of the Gridded Population of the World (GPW) and Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project (GRUMP) data collections
  • City University of New York (CUNY) Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR) - Producers of global gridded population projections and settlements data
  • Esri - Produces the World Population Estimate datasets for 2013, 2015, and 2016. These data are designed to support economic analysis. The layers include human footprint settlement scores, population counts and density, a confidence surface, and a country level source and a metadata dataset.
  • European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC) - Producers of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL)
  • Facebook Connectivity Lab and Internet.org - Producers of the High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL)
  • German Aerospace Center (DLR) - Producers of the Global Urban Footprint (GUF)
  • ImageCat, Inc. - Producers of the Inhance data platform for built infrastructure data
  • Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) - Producers of Landscan
  • U.S. Census Bureau - Producers of country-level high resolution population data sets
  • The WorldPop Project, University of Southampton (UK) and University of Louisville (USA) - Producers of WorldPop data sets

POPGRID also includes representatives from academia, industry, international organizations, and donors, including, among others:

  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Google Earth Engine
  • United Nations Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM)
  • United Nations Population Division
  • United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
  • The World Bank