SPRINGFIELD, Virginia – The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has released the latest version of global population distribution data, LandScan Global 2022. The LandScan Global dataset has approximately 1-kilometer resolution, representing a 24-hour ambient population.

The public availability of LandScan Global aids institutions in performing activities requiring accurate population information, such as planning for and responding to emergencies, assessing human health and security risks and conducting site suitability studies.  

“NGA understands the criticality of timely and accurate global population data for a wide range of missions, and that’s why we continue to make this data available to the public without restriction,” said Debbie Fugate, Ph.D., NGA senior GEOINT authority for cartography and human geography.

Updates for LandScan Global 2022 include: 

• Updated census results and newly defined administrative boundaries. 
• Adjusted population totals and distributions to account for refugee and internally-displaced persons for Burma, Bangladesh, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. 
• Artificial intelligence-delineated building feature extents from high resolution imagery for Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Comoros, Indonesia, Laos, Madagascar, Maldives, Mauritius, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. 
• Global addition of thousands of smaller villages and populated places through the refinement of built-up areas. 

In addition to the availability of the annual LandScan Global, NGA also offers LandScan High-Definition. LandScan HD provides a population distribution dataset over smaller geographic areas with approximately 90-meter resolution. 

To download the full list of LandScan products, visit https://landscan.ornl.gov/.