Related papers: Case study: Mapping potential informal settlements…

Knowing where people live is a fundamental component of many decision making processes such as urban development, infectious disease containment, evacuation planning, risk management, conservation planning, and more. While bottom-up, survey…

Understanding temporary migration is crucial for addressing various socio-economic and environmental challenges in developing countries. However, traditional surveys often fail to capture such movements effectively, leading to a scarcity of…

In many rural areas of low- and middle-income countries, weekly gatherings of buyers and sellers are the most tangible manifestation of the market economy. Knowing these markets' whereabouts and activity over time could provide insights in…

Millions of people worldwide are absent from their country's census. Accurate, current, and granular population metrics are critical to improving government allocation of resources, to measuring disease control, to responding to natural…

In low and middle income countries, household surveys are a valuable source of information for a range of health and demographic indicators. Increasingly, subnational estimates are required for targeting interventions and evaluating…

Reliable data about the stock of physical capital and infrastructure in developing countries is typically very scarce. This is particular a problem for data at the subnational level where existing data is often outdated, not consistently…

Humanitarian actions require accurate information to efficiently delegate support operations. Such information can be maps of building footprints, building functions, and population densities. While the access to this information is…

Urbanization is a common phenomenon in developing countries and it poses serious challenges when not managed effectively. Lack of proper planning and management may cause the encroachment of urban fabrics into reserved or special regions…

Data relevant to flood vulnerability is minimal and infrequently collected, if at all, for much of the world. This makes it difficult to highlight areas for humanitarian aid, monitor changes, and support communities in need. It would be…

Spatial information on cropland distribution, often called cropland or crop maps, are critical inputs for a wide range of agriculture and food security analyses and decisions. However, high-resolution cropland maps are not readily available…

Open-source data and tools are lauded as essential for replicable and usable social science, though little is known about their use in resource constrained human service provision. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities of…

Fine-grained population maps are needed in several domains, like urban planning, environmental monitoring, public health, and humanitarian operations. Unfortunately, in many countries only aggregate census counts over large spatial units…

Large-scale surveys are essential tools for informing social science research and policy, but running surveys is costly and time-intensive. If we could accurately simulate group-level survey results, this would therefore be very valuable to…

Automated tracking of urban development in areas where construction information is not available became possible with recent advancements in machine learning and remote sensing. Unfortunately, these solutions perform best on high-resolution…

Population health surveys are an important tool to effectively allocate limited resources in low resource communities. In such an environment, surveys are often done by local population with pen and paper. Data thus collected is difficult…

Understanding segregation is essential to develop planning tools for building more inclusive cities. Theoretically, segregation at the work place has been described as lower compared to residential segregation given the importance of skill…

An increasing number of human activities are studied using data produced by individuals' ICT devices. In particular, when ICT data contain spatial information, they represent an invaluable source for analyzing urban dynamics. However, there…

In recent years, the geospatial industry has been developing at a steady pace. This growth implies the addition of satellite constellations that produce a copious supply of satellite imagery and other Remote Sensing data on a daily basis.…

Identifying and addressing poverty is challenging in administrative units with limited information on income distribution and well-being. To overcome this obstacle, small area estimation methods have been developed to provide reliable and…

One billion people worldwide are estimated to be living in slums, and documenting and analyzing these regions is a challenging task. As compared to regular slums; the small, scattered and temporary nature of temporary slums makes data…