Estimating and Mapping Population in Off-Grid and Hard to Reach Places

DESCRIPTION: The project seeks to increase the visibility of off-grid, hard-to-reach populations by providing information about the location and size of small settlements/villages through an online interface. High-resolution satellite imagery, volunteered geographic information (VGI), and modeling will be leveraged, with a focus on small settlements within mangrove areas of six data-poor countries in West Africa, including Sierra Leone and Liberia. Partners are The Connectivity Lab at Facebook (contributing their computing capacity, which will enable the delineation of houses based on high resolution satellite data) and Wetlands International Africa (with expertise working in mangrove areas in West Africa and in Africa more generally). CIESIN associate research scientist Sylwia Trzaska is the principal investigator of the project.