Gridded Population of the World (GPW)

Description

Currently in it's 4th version and 11th revision (version 4.11), GPW models the distribution of human population (counts and densities) on a continuous global raster surface^[1]. The purpose of GPW is to provide a population layer that is compatible with datasets from other disciplines and with remote sensing. It is a great tool if population analysis is a portion of your project, and it can be downloaded in different resolutions depending on the need of your project. GPW aggregates population data from hundreds of organizations, national statistics offices, mapping agencies, and planning agencies. To see the data source(s) used for each country in GPWv4, please download the country-level sources spreadsheet from this page.

There are 9 datasets available in GPWv4:

Basic demographic characteristics - pop counts by age and sex
Administrative unit centre points with population estimates
Data quality indicators - to provide info on the pop count and density raster layers
Population count
UN WPP adjusted population count - adjusted to match UN country totals
Population density
UN WPP adjusted population density - adjusted to match UN country totals
National identifier grid - country boundaries to help you aggregate the data if need be
Land and water area - area estimates

Clicking on each dataset opens a page where metadata, citations, and other information can be viewed in a user-friendly manner. This information includes more specific metadata for that particular GPW dataset, as well as high resolution maps for download. The different datasets in GPWv4 are designed to work well together, as oftentimes it will be useful to use more than one dataset in your analysis.

Metadata

Metadata Component	Description
Theme	Population
Source	Socioeconomic Data and Application Center (SEDAC)
Purpose	To provide a population layer that is compatible with datasets from other disciplines & remotely sensed imagery
Time Frame	First version made of the global pop surface in 1995; current version is from data collected between 2005 - 2014; future estimate available for 2020.
File Type	Spatial
File Format	ASCII (text) or GeoTiff. Some layers available in netCDF format
Structure	Raster
Projection and coordinate system	Geographic (latitude and longitude in decimal degrees) - WGS84
Extent	Global
Resolution or scale	1 km to 110 km (5 resolutions to pick from)

Common Problems

Ensure you have an account, as datasets are only available for download if you do. Make sure to do this in advance as sometimes it can take a little for your request to be approved.
The data for the different target years are created from the same input data. This means that although they use projected growth rates and do make a prediction about the future (for example in the 2020 time step), they are not a true time-series and should not be used in that way. Additionally, the same growth rate has been used to extrapolate the source data to all target years. This matters in special cases, such as where conflict has occurred. Thus the toll on population that severe events (conflict, famine) have had is not yet reliably captured in this dataset.
Please see this page on the GPW website that outlines some FAQs for more information on questions you may encounter. This link will open up to an existing FAQ but see the side bar along the right hand side for other questions.

Downloading Instructions

From here: https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/collection/gpw-v4/sets/browse, click on your desired dataset.
The new dataset page will open, directly to a description of the dataset.
Select the tab "Data Download" from the menu at the top.
It will prompt you to log in to your account.
At the bottom of the Data Dowload box there will be some drop-down fields where you can input information to query the type of download you would like (for example, file type, spatial resolution, year).
Once you've selected all fields, a link will appear. Clicking on that link will begin the download.
Each download is a compressed zip file. A separate documentation zip file contains PDF documentation, a Microsoft Excel file (.xlsx) with country-level information and sources, and a text file (.txt) with a log of changes to the dataset by version.

Restrictions on Use

The GPW data collection is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Users are free to use, copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work for commercial and non-commercial purposes, without restriction, as long as clear attribution of the source is provided.

↑ Erin Doxsey-Whitfield, Kytt MacManus, Susana B. Adamo, Linda Pistolesi, John Squires, Olena Borkovska & Sandra R. Baptista (2015). Taking Advantage of the Improved Availability of Census Data: A First Look at the Gridded Population of the World, Version 4, Papers in Applied Geography, 1:3, 226-234, DOI: 10.1080/23754931.2015.1014272

[1] Erin Doxsey-Whitfield, Kytt MacManus, Susana B. Adamo, Linda Pistolesi, John Squires, Olena Borkovska & Sandra R. Baptista (2015). Taking Advantage of the Improved Availability of Census Data: A First Look at the Gridded Population of the World, Version 4, Papers in Applied Geography, 1:3, 226-234, DOI: 10.1080/23754931.2015.1014272

[1]