Research

Semi-automatic mapping of pre-census enumeration areas and population sampling frames

Enumeration Areas (EAs) are the operational geographic units for the collection and dissemination of census data and are often used as a national sampling frame for various types of surveys. In many poor or conflict-affected countries, EA demarcations are incomplete, outdated, or missing. Even for countries that are stable and prosperous, creating and updating EAs is one of the most challenging yet essential tasks in the preparation for a national census. Commonly, EAs are created by manually digitising small geographic units on high-resolution satellite imagery or physically walking the boundaries of units, both of which are highly time, cost, and labour intensive.

Authors Sarchil Qader, Veronique Lefebvre, Andrew Tatem, Utz Pape, Kristen Himelein, Amy Ninneman, Linus Bengtsson & Tomas Bird
Source Nature
Published 2021
Full publication

More publications

The Population Seen from Space: When Satellite Images Come to the Rescue of the Census

Great steps have been made in recent decades in observing the Earth from the sky. Landscapes and infrastructure can now be mapped at an extremely fine spatial scale. These data—particularly useful to geographers—can also benefit demographers. By combining observations of […]

Rethinking Education for Sustainable Development [Chapter 9]

This book explores how education can be used as a tool to promote sustainability practices as the world faces huge challenges related to climate change and public health. GRID3 contributed to Chapter 9, “Building Capacity for Geospatial Data-Driven Education Planning”.

High-resolution estimates of social distancing feasibility, mapped for urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa

Social distancing has been widely-implemented as a public health measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite widespread application of social distancing guidance, the feasibility of people adhering to such guidance varies in different settings, influenced by population density, the built environment […]