PERN cyberseminar on the Application of Gridded Population and Settlement Products in Geospatial Population-Environment Research14 to 18 October 2019
Research in the field of population and environment increasingly requires high-resolution geospatial data. These data sets can be produced at a variety of spatial and temporal scales, paving the way for relevant research questions both about the impacts of human activities on the environment and, in turn, environmental impacts on human health, well-being and livelihoods. Such data are also important for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In collaboration with the POPGRID Data Collaborative, the Population-Environment Research Network (PERN) held a cyberseminar from 14 to 18 October 2019 on the topic of the “Application of Gridded Population and Settlement Products in Geospatial Population-Environment Research”. The topic was introduced by a webinar held on 14 October 2019.
The webinar included an introduction to each expert panelist’s topic as well as an introduction to the POPGRID Collaborative, which is a public-private partnership in producing, using, and integrating gridded products into various applications. A link to the full webinar is here.
The cyberseminar started with an overview of gridded population and settlement products in population-environment-climate studies. It then addressed methodological and application topics specific to gridded population and settlement data. A set of expert panelists wrote summary papers (see below) summarizing respective contributions to the seminar. The summary papers include various threads highlighting data products, applications and the fitness-for-use of various gridded population and settlement products in population-environment research. The fitness-for-use concept is based on the main cyberseminar discussion paper: “Allocating people to pixels: A review of large-scale gridded population data products and their fitness for use.” That paper, along with the summary contributions, framed a weeklong, dynamic online exchange between expert panelists and the PERN research community. The archive of the discussions can be found here.
Within the summary papers and online discussions, different aspects of the fitness-for-use concept gets attention, including the application of gridded population and settlement data for case study specific examples, interrogating uncertainty aspects of the data, and discussing the importance of when and how endogeneity matters when using gridded population and settlement data. There are also contributions highlighting aspects of temporal and spatial conformity in producing and using the gridded data along with scale and projection considerations. Lastly, many of the forum threads include embedded links to relevant papers and data products that represent some of the most recent and cutting-edge research in applying gridded population and settlement data products to the field of population environment research.
The following participants and their respective topic contributions to the PERN cyberseminar:
Stefan Leyk, University of Colorado Boulder
Brian Blankespoor, The World Bank “Local Data for Local Decisions”
Sergio Freire, European Commission, DG Joint Research Centre “Summary of product development and application of gridded population and settlement data”
Catherine Linard, Université de Namur, Taïs Grippa, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Refining intra-urban population mapping in sub-Saharan Africa: from land cover to land use”
Maria José Andrade-Nuñez, University of Puerto Rico “Lessons from the Field: Refugees, Climate Change, and Health”
Cascade Tuholske, University of California, Santa Barbara “Urban Population Dynamics and Climate Change in Africa”
Alessandro Sorichetta “Perspective on Applications of Gridded Demographic Datasets in Poor Data Settings”
Expert contributions and online discussions can be accessed on the PERN website.
|