Implications for Tracking SDG Indicator Metrics with Gridded Population Data

Citation: Tuholske, Cascade, Andrea E. Gaughan, Alessandro Sorichetta, Alex de Sherbinin, Agathe Bucherie, Carolynne Hultquist, Forrest Stevens, Andrew Kruczkiewicz, Charles Huyck, and Greg Yetman. 2021. "Implications for Tracking SDG Indicator Metrics with Gridded Population Data" Sustainability 13, no. 13: 7329. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137329

Achieving the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) requires accurate, consistent, and accessible population data. Yet many low- and middle-income countries lack reliable or recent census data at the sufficiently fine spatial scales needed to monitor SDG progress. While the increasing abundance of Earth observation-derived gridded population products provides analysis-ready population estimates, end users lack clear use criteria to track SDGs indicators. In fact, recent comparisons of gridded population products identify wide variation across gridded population products. The authors present three case studies to illuminate how gridded population datasets compare in measuring and monitoring SDGs to advance the “fitness for use” guidance. The focus is on SDG 11.5, which aims to reduce the number of people impacted by disasters. The study uses five gridded population datasets to measure and map hazard exposure for three case studies: the 2015 earthquake in Nepal; Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, Malawi, and Zimbabwe (MMZ) in 2019; and flash flood susceptibility in Ecuador.