WorldPop Project Population Data: Estimated Residential Population per 100x100m Grid Square (WorldPop/POP)

High-resolution, contemporary data on human population distributions are
a prerequisite for the accurate measurement of the impacts of population
growth, for monitoring changes, and for planning interventions. The WorldPop
project aims to meet these needs through the provision of detailed and open
access population distribution datasets built using transparent and
peer-reviewed approaches.

Full details on the methods and datasets used in constructing the
data, along with open access publications, are provided on the
WorldPop website. In brief, recent census-based
population counts matched to their associated administrative units are
disaggregated to ≈100x100m grid cells through machine learning approaches
that exploit the relationships between population densities and a range of
geospatial covariate layers. The datasets depict estimated number of people
residing in each grid cell in 2010, 2015, and other years.

Further WorldPop gridded datasets on population age structures,
poverty, urban growth, and population dynamics are freely available on
the WorldPop website. WorldPop represents a collaboration between
researchers at the University of Southampton, Universite Libre de
Bruxelles, and University of Louisville. The project is principally
funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.