Article by Andrew Zolli: “Of all the questions we ask of a map, perhaps none is more fundamental than this one: Where are the people?
It sounds like a question we should have answered long ago. Yet in an age of seemingly ubiquitous, real-time information, our picture of where humanity actually lives remains surprisingly blurry. Censuses are expensive, infrequent and, in many places, badly out of date. Cities across the Global South are growing far faster than their residents can be counted. Conflict, disaster, and climate stress are setting millions of people in motion. The result is that many of the world’s most vulnerable communities are, in effect, invisible – and on a volatile, warming planet, invisibility can be fatal.
In early 2024, we announced a collaboration with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab to help close that gap. Today, I’m delighted to share that the results of this multi-year initiative are being made widely available.
The result is Populace: a continuously updated map of the world’s population, realized in unprecedented detail. Populace measures the density of human populations across the entire globe at a gridded resolution of 40 meters, updated quarterly. It is the most up-to-date, highest resolution, and most accurate population data available anywhere – and it’s available now…(More)”.
