From census to grids: Comparing gridded population of the world with Swedish census records

Abstract

The increased availability of digital spatial data combined with improved capabilities of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have allowed for the development of several global population distribution databases, such as the GPW, and LandScan. Making population distribution data available as a high-resolution raster database which facilitates rapid GIS analysis at the local level and for any zoning. Due to the complex nature of population as a geographical variable, several approaches have been adopted to estimate their spatial distribution, including statistical modeling, surface modeling, and cartographic methods. However, many of these methods require assumptions that oversimplify the reality or disaggregate population totals based on the heuristic or empirical parameters. Recently, critical voices were heard, questioning the quality and usability of gridded population data. In this paper, we compare gridded population data products for parts of Sweden with high-resolution population records obtained from the Swedish National Registry through the Regional Office of Scania, Sweden. Ground-truth consists of the total population in Scania located as points at the center coordinates of their real estate (located by the Swedish Land Survey). Results indicate that there are significant differences between compared datasets.