The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has opened its human geography population datasets to the public to assist in emergency response operations, human health and security risk assessment and other humanitarian activities.
NGA said Monday it collaborated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to enable the public availability of its LandScan Global and LandScan High-Definition data sets to enhance data sharing between the government and the public.
LandScan Global shows the distribution of population at about 1 km resolution over an average 24-hour period while LandScan HD provides population distribution at 90 m resolution for select areas worldwide.
Both datasets use land use and infrastructure data from various sources and incorporate occupancy estimates from ORNL’s population density tables project.
“Understanding the geographic distribution of populations is critically important, both in times of crisis and in the development of informed strategies for the future,” said Roger Marin, director of the office of geography at NGA.
