I have always loved maps. I am one of those who spend 100 euros on a book with old maps, and when we talk about interactive maps on the web, I don’t even tell you.
That’s why we have the maps category prominently featured here, and why every time I find a useful new map on the internet, I run to tell you about it.
In this case we have populationexplorer.org, a new interactive map that we can use to visualize global population density.
The idea is to show where people live around the world, with basic demographic data that helps us filter by gender and age.
The map has been created by the Facebook Connectivity Lab and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University. They used artificial intelligence to estimate population density from buildings identified from satellites, and it is capable of estimating population with a resolution of 30 meters.
It takes into account more than 160 countries around the world, and at any time we can use existing tools to define, search and download demographic data for defined areas. We just have to draw on the map a region of less than 1000 km2 and see the estimated total population living in that area, divided by sex and age. We can also search by country in the side menu.
It is not the first online map that shows this information, as they comment on Maps Mania, Duncan Smith’s uses data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) to visualize the number of people living in each square kilometer of the Earth , and the SEDAC Population Estimator uses data from NASA’s Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS).