Sustainable regional support to governments
WorldPop aims to build sustainable solutions to demographic data challenges through partnerships and capacity strengthening. An example of this is in the Latin America and Caribbean region, where the team’s efforts has supported the establishment of a regional support network for governments across the continent.
The work started with Colombia’s 2018 census, where challenges were being faced in conducting enumeration in remote regions where conflict was often occurring. WorldPop supported the National Administrative Department of Statistics of Colombia (DANE) in collaboration with UNFPA in co-developing methods to estimate population numbers through the integration of satellite and other geospatial data with local community estimates. These approaches were taken on by DANE and used to impute population numbers for the census.
When the Brazil national statistics office (IBGE) were interested in similar geospatial modelling methods to prepare for their own census, WorldPop, UNFPA and DANE worked together to run workshops and the co-development of solutions. This further developed capacity and interest in the Latin America and Caribbean region for such methods, and prompted WorldPop and UNFPA to co-lead regional capacity strengthening workshops for multiple governments and agencies.
As a result of these workshops, UNFPA’s Latin America and Caribbean regional office has worked with the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean to establish regular regional support in geospatial population modelling independent of WorldPop. Collaborations continue around new research and capacity strengthening, but the independent network demonstrates how WorldPop can achieve its goals to build sustainable solutions to demographic data challenges through partnerships and capacity strengthening.
Further information
- Technical assistance and training on modelled population estimates and national sampling frames to support census in Latin America and the Caribbean region (WorldPop)
- Social cartography and satellite-derived building coverage for post-census population estimates in difficult-to-access regions of Colombia (Population Studies)
